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Lamouchi’s changes in personnel could end up holding Forest back as the season goes on – Opinion

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So Sabri Lamouchi has managed to get things back on track somewhat with the last two results against Hull City and Wigan Athletic.

Coming off the back of what was a rather poor run of form, having not won a game since QPR away back in November, things have finally managed to move in the right direction, although he’s doing it with quite unconventional methods.

Mainly it’s through playing players in some rather unnatural positions, most notably Chema, who despite being a natural centre-back throughout his career, has found himself playing left-back these past two games, in place of usual left-backs Yuri Ribeiro and Jack Robinson, despite the latter being fit enough to have been named on the bench in the last two games.

He’s also done it in attack as well, with Joao Carvalho, traditionally used to playing in the middle of the park, has found himself playing on the left-wing not just recently but throughout the season as well.

I suppose the question is, is there a method to this ‘madness’?

Similar to what I touched on yesterday, so long as Lamouchi and Forest are getting results, you can’t stay too mad at him, because at the end of the day, that’s all you can ask for. Whilst I have complained about the nature of Forest’s performance this season, I feel that this is where the two stories can sort of come together.

Could the team be doing a lot better if the players were being played in their natural positions, rather than having to shoe-horn them into positions that aren’t getting the best out of them (Carvalho scoring a 6.1 on WhoScored.com against Wigan for instance)?

That way instead of scraping results like the one against Wigan Athletic, where Forest were thoroughly outplayed, losing 64% to 36% in terms of possession, 14 to 9 in terms of total shots, 4 to 2 with shots on target and 13 corners to 2, they might be in a position to start dominating games like they did against QPR.

Will Forest be in the Top 6 come the end of January?

Yes

No

And they’ll finally be on the way to catching up with the teams above them in the table.

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