Forest 0-0 Seagulls

Forest manager Colin Calderwood still believes his side can get an automatic promotion place. He believes that, in spite of the fact that we’re 11 points behind second placed Carlisle and that we only have 8 games left to play. My message to Colin Calderwood tonight is, wake up and smell the coffee mate, you ‘aint going nowhere.

After yet another lacklustre and quite frankly below par performance, any hopes of automatic promotion can be firmly laid to rest. On this showing, a playoff place is all that can be hoped for and there’s no guarantee we will get that. We had the chances today, but we weren’t good enough to put them away.

The Reds could have gone behind today as early as the 4th min, but Brighton goal machine Nicky Forster managed to send his shot wide when it seemed easier to score. This awoke the sleepy Reds into action and Commons did brilliantly to skip by two of the visiting defenders and into the box. After doing the hard work, KC let off a bullet of a shot, but it was straight at the keeper and he was able to make an easy save.

Moments later, a tired looking Thornhill hit the post with a shot and Kuipers was called into action again. This time to pull off a double save from a Chambers header and the rebound from a Cohen shot. The visitors were playing some tidy football and were looking good as promotion contenders. They knocked the ball around well and were trying to hit us on the break.

The half died out, but not before the Seagulls gave the Reds a scare. Elphick forced Smith into his only bit of action in the half, when he had to push his effort onto the bar and over for a corner. It was turning out to be a frustrating afternoon and the second half would be no better, in fact much worse. You hoped that CC would have instilled a bit of fire into the bellies of his underperforming players, but he clearly didn’t.

Brighton had decided during the interval that a point would be enough. That was a shame, because we were there for the taking, so more fools them. They were content to put men behind the ball and the otherwise impressive Kuipers resorted to infuriate the home fans with his time wasting tactics. That said they were not without chances to win the game.

A rare moment of excitement in the game came when substitute McGugan hit the post with a terrific shot that for once had Kuipers well beaten. McLeary came on with 15 mins to go, but to be honest he didn’t get a look in. Agogo came on as well, but if it wasn’t for his dazzling orange boots you would not have noticed he was on the pitch.

All in all a disappointing afternoon. If you think we are heading for automatic promotion, forget it. It’s time to prepare for the dreaded playoffs again and I’m not too confident we can achieve that at the moment.