Forest Are Playing With Fire

The honeymoon is over for new Forest boss Billy Davies and if he didn’t realise it before, he as sure as hell knows now that he has a massive job on his hands to keep the club in the Championship this season.

The 2-0 defeat at the hands of Prem bound Brum yesterday, will have been evidence enough that his woefully thin and inexperienced squad have their work cut out to survive this division. Davies says he relishes the challenge ahead and is enthused with the youngsters and their potential. With a bit of luck, he’ll be around long enough to see that potential bear fruit, but it’s a risky step to take in our current position.

His post match comments on BBC Radio Nottingham, gave the broadest hint yet, that he won’t be bringing anyone in to bolster the squad. When pressed on whether he’d be adding to his squad, he asked. ‘Where are these players?’ It sounds as if Billy Davies is now singing from the same hymn sheet as Messrs Arthur and Doughty, when he says that it’s difficult to bring players in during the January transfer window. I have to say that’s something of a disappointment and that I expected a little more from our leader. He is after all, supposed to be his own man and isn’t exactly famous for toeing the party line and being used as a puppet by the clubs that have employed him in the past. Maybe his time out of the game has mellowed him. Time will tell.

Davies says that he knows the players he wants, which is always handy, but we need them now. It really does look as so we’re going to try and get to the end of the season with what we have. If it works, then great, but why take the risk? We are in serious danger of going down to League 1 again with the current squad. This is still the same team that was struggling under Calderwood.

A quick glance at the table shows us sitting in the relative comfort of 19th and 4 points above the drop zone, but closer scrutiny shows our position to be more precarious than it at first seems. We’ve played 2 more games than Barnsley and Watford and have a tough set of fixtures coming up. Ipswich and the Sheep are coming up in the next 7 days and by the time they’re out of the way we could be back in the bottom 3. Billy Davies and the club were waxing lyrical earlier this week, about the future being bright. It may not be as bright this time next week, if we fail to pick up the points.

It’s a very risky strategy that NFFC have adopted and one that Billy Davies has clearly accepted. I don’t think it’s a strategy that most fans would have taken, but then it’s not our money that we are spending. Contrary to what Davies has said, the players are out there. Camp, Bunn, Bywater, McSheffrey, Porter, Brown, Croft, Hoolahan, Adebola and plenty more besides, were all linked as potential targets during the window. For one reason or another we missed the boat and failed to sign a single one. That failure could cost us dearly and we all know what that failure will be.