Forest stumble at the last hurdle yet again

Not again. When will Forest learn not to switch off until the final whistle has blown? Once again they dominated a match and looked comfortable, but then Colin Calderwood made one of his famous suicidal substitutions, and what do you know, Leicester grabbed two late goals on the counter attack to snatch victory from our grasp.

I'm just grateful that it was just the Carling Cup, but nevertheless I did feel gutted at the end of the match as we were on the verge of not only putting one over our East Midlands rivals, but also getting our own back on Gary Megson. And the manner in which we threw away the game was very similar to the Yeovil match four months ago to the very day, so it brought some very painful emotions back to the surface. I still haven't completely got over that night, and nor do I suspect have the players, yet.

It was very good of Leicester to let us have a free goal. When I saw Paul Smith running the length of the pitch, I just assumed that the two goalkeepers were swapping ends, but then my dad explained what had happened. I have never seen anything like it before in my life!

We didn't play that well in the first half, and Leicester deserved their equaliser for the amount of possession that they had, but they should not have been awarded the free kick. It was a good, clean tackle from Chris Cohen, but the referee obviously thought otherwise.

But we were excellent after the break. We played some very good attacking football. Cohen and Kris Commons were both impressive, and as a result of the midfield being better, so too were the strikers. Junior Agogo made lots of good runs, and Nathan Tyson scored a typical striker's goal, which I haven't seen for ages. Most of our goals this season have come from set pieces, so it was very pleasing to see one of our strikers score from open play last night. Let's hope that it's a sign of things to come.

Smith had a bit of a mixed game. He made some very good saves, but he should have done better with the two late goals. He fumbled the first, and on any other day he would probably have saved Stephen Clemence's last-gasp strike. Still, the defence could have helped him out a bit. I wish they wouldn't just stand back all the time and let the opposition run at them. That is just asking for trouble.

I don't blame the players, though. I think what changed the game was Calderwood taking off Neil Lennon for James Perch. I just didn't see any sense in that whatsoever. Lennon didn't appear to be injured, so why take him off?
We didn't have any leadership on the pitch at the most crucial moment of the game. This was a huge tactical mistake on Calderwood's part. I just hope that he learns from it, but I won't hold my breath.

On a scale of one to ten on the guttedomermeter, it's about six. The Yeovil match absolutely destroyed me. But this is nothing. It's only the Carling Cup, and while it might have been nice to go to Aston Villa and pit our wits against Martin O'Neill and John Robertson's side, we've got much more important things to concentrate on, and now we're out of both the minor cup competitions, League One remains our sole focus until after Christmas. This will give us a bit of breathing space, and you would hope give us an advantage over the other teams.