Former Nottingham Forest midfielder Jermaine Jenas says the club would have had no chance of winning promotion to the Premier League, if they had qualified for the Championship play-offs this season.
Forest missed out on the play-offs on the final day of the regular season following a 4-1 thrashing by Stoke at The City Ground, having started the day fifth in the table, three points better off the seventh-placed Swansea, and with a goal difference advantage of five.
But a remarkable collapse from Lamouchi’s side, coupled with Swansea’s own 4-1 win at Reading, denied Forest a place in the play-offs, and Jenas believes that even if it hadn’t, his old club would have had little chance of securing a place in the top-flight.
Speaking about Forest’s capitualtion, Jenas was quoted by Nottinghamshire Live as telling BBC Radio5Live: “I was looking at them and thinking that even if they get through, they have got absolutely no chance.
“All they talk about going into the play-offs is form – who is going to make that late run – and they were going the other way, falling off the edge of a cliff. They couldn’t buy a win. Against teams down near the bottom they were struggling.”
Would Forest have won promotion if they reached the play-offs?Yes
No
|
It is hard to argue with what Jenas is saying here really.
Had they managed to get away with that capitulation against Stoke to squeeze into the play-offs, they would still have been under all sorts of pressure in the battle to win promotion to the Premier League.
Lamouchi’s side were in some horrendous form at the end of the season, so are unlikely to have had any sort of confidence or momentum going into that end of season promotion lottery.
As a result, it would have been hard to see them getting much against some of those sides they would have been competing against, meaning it would have still been a surprise to see them competing in English football’s top-flight next season.
