Forest Blogs

An Epic Look At All Things Forest From A Fan. Trigger Happy Chairman And The Repercussions

|

But in the case of Forest, there is rarely surprise. After twenty-odd years outside of the Premier League, the promise of the holy grail of top-flight football seems as far away as it always has been. Last Saturday – being totally outplayed by bogey-team Brentford – was no surprise. It was just like it’s always been. Despite huge investment, we’ve clearly still a long way to go. If anything, we’re lucky to be 14th!

So where is it going wrong – so far – on the pitch for Forest? As the other half discussed potential boat tours and what factor sun cream I’d administered, this question circled in my head like a shark circling its prey. My first thought, as it always is, was ‘the manager’. But it’s all too easy to blame the manager (again) – grasping desperately for that magical silver bullet that transforms failure into success practically overnight. We’ve blamed it on the manager many times before – eighteen times since Cloughy left, to be exact. That hasn’t worked out so well. Football is a subtler art than that.

“Perhaps it’s down to how we start games?”, I wondered. Of the last twenty-three Championship league games (that’s half a season, note), Forest have scored a whopping five goals in the first half. To put that in context – and this shouldn’t come as a surprise – that’s the worst in the league by two clear goals. It’s so bad, newly-promoted Wigan have already surpassed our meagre efforts with seven first half goals in their six Championship games since their promotion. But maybe this is a symptom, and not a cause.

Scanning through Brentford’s line-up got me thinking. What are the likes of Yoann Barbet, Romaine Sawyers and Josh McEachran doing right that Ben Watson, Joe Lolley and Gil Dias are getting wrong? Well, one statistic that jumped out was the respective club appearances for some of these players. Barbet, for example, has played 88 times for Brentford; Sawyers 95 and McEachran 78. That’s some serious game time. Taking this idea further, I worked out Forest’s entire starting eleven from the weekend have amassed 291 league and cup appearances for the club – Brentford have stacked up 624, while Wigan’s starting eleven when they played Forest collectively have 660.

I hope these statistics are as striking for you as they were for me. Given these numbers, and given their home supremacy and recent form, too, it really was no longer quite as baffling to me as to why we were so second-rate on those two afternoons. Yes, it’s not all about how long a player has been at a club but, having given this a lot of thought these last few days, I feel it has a much bigger effect than people presume. Fans calling for ‘time’ and a chance for the team to ‘gel’ have really got my goat over the years, I’ll be honest – I’m as impatient as the best of them. But I think I get it now – I see what they’re trying to say. Some travelling fans have described our away performances as being akin to a ‘bunch of strangers’ – well, in relative terms, that’s exactly what they are.

This isn’t a new problem for Forest, looking back. Some quick ‘Wikipedia-ing’ sat round the pool shows Forest had a grand total of two players start 30 league games or more last year – one of those being Kieran Dowell, who has taken all that experience back to his parent club (the other being Ben Osborn). Compare that to Brentford (9), Millwall (8), Preston (7), Sheffield United (7), Middlesbrough (6) and Leeds (6). Cardiff – promoted against all odds – had nine. Imagine being a Brentford or a Cardiff, where nine of your starting eleven pick themselves for at least two-thirds of the season? As a Forest fan I find that very difficult to picture indeed. Middlesbrough, who last time out racked up a fourth consecutive Championship clean sheet at table-topping Leeds, fielded a back six of Randolph (56 club appearances), Shotton (34), Ayala (156 – the same Ayala Forest dismissed after a mere 14 outings), Flint (6), Fry (34) and Friend (247). That’s a total of 533 club appearances for their back five alone, if we’re counting – that’s before you even consider the midfield screening offered by Howson (54) and Clayton (179). And don’t even get me started on the merits of Seaman, Dixon, Adams, Bould and Winterburn (405, 458, 504, 287, 440 = 2094).

Much of this instability rests firmly with the manager, of course. Karanka talks of needing two players per position but this can surely only encourage a disjointed, inconsistent eleven – and in turn disjointed, inconsistent performances (evidently, so far at least). Karanka needs to work out what his best eleven is, quick, and stick to it, come rain or shine. This unfortunately means playing players, at times, through stuttering performances, as I’m sure the likes of Millwall, Preston and Sheffield United players experience too. With the sheer size of the squad Karanka’s assembled, though, I fear this isn’t going to be possible – players, and fans alike, will be demanding changes at the slightest hint of a drop in performance from anyone in the starting XI. He’s made a rod for his own back in this respect. We’ve seen this already. Forest have seen only two players start all six of their league games this season (Fox and Pantillimon). Leeds (1st) have nine, Brentford (5th) and Wigan (10th) have seven, while Sheffield United (3rd) and Bristol City (6th) have six. So, compared to last season, it’s a definitely a case of ‘same old, same old’ in this regard. Our apparent ‘boom-or-bust’ transfer policy is not the way to go about promoting consistency. Squads need a careful, slow evolution of playing staff – replacing perhaps 4 or 5 of the weaker players each season with upgrades. This allows for those players the time they need to find their feet amongst the trusted 6 or 7 players they’re alongside. The positive results that a generally consistent side can seemingly bring in turn helps them settle quicker – the positivity snowballs and momentum is gained in an upward direction. This is what the likes of Brentford do, and it works for them – it helps them avoid the clutches of FFP (a genuine concern for Forest in 2019-20 now), too. This isn’t anywhere near as exciting as signing 17 new players, I know – but neither is getting taught a lesson in football from the likes of Wigan or Brentford, either.

Share this article

Because We Love Football