Impressive Forest just keep getting better and better

After almost three weeks of being starved of any meaningful Forest action, I was itching to get back to the City Ground yesterday, despite the freezing cold weather. Thankfully, Forest warmed us all up with their third win in a row on the back of probably their best performance so far this season.

I was rather anxious before the game as I thought what with the weather being cold and miserable, the Forest players would not be on top form, and Crewe had just won four on the bounce and not lost in six games. Taking those circumstances into account, I told myself that a draw would not be a disaster.

However, I needn't have worried, as far from having an off-day, Forest put on a 90-minute display (yes, I did say 90 minutes!) of very good passing football. The only thing that let them down was their finishing – they managed to hit the woodwork five times during the course of the game. But luckily, Arron Davies and Sammy Clingan (yes, I did say Sammy Clingan!) did manage to hit the target, so we didn't end up ruing our spurned opportunities.

I am not sure if Crewe were diabolical, or whether we were awesome. It was probably something in between. I don't believe Crewe could have got that bad overnight. We always tend to play well when we play Crewe – apparantley it's because they like to play attacking football instead of long-ball. Our best performance last season was at Gresty Road when we beat them 4-1. But let's hope that unlike last season, there will be plenty more pleasing-on-the-eye performances to come this term.

It's difficult to pick a Man of the Match as the only player who had an off-day was probably Kris Commons. But that's nothing new. Everybody else did their bit. Not least of all, Julian Bennett. He obviously was worried about the fit-again Matt Lockwood breathing down his neck, but after yesterday's display, I think Lockwood should be worried, as Bennett was tremendous, making some excellent tackles. On his day, Bennett is a very good left back. He just needs to be more consistent. You really can't accuse him of lacking passion. You only have to watch him celebrate the goals to see how much the Club means to him. I do worry, though, that when he dives on to the other players, he may injure himself or one of his team mates!

The win puts us back in second place, and thanks to Brighton's late equaliser, we have leapfrogged Carlisle. It's a pity Leyton Orient won at Huddersfield, otherwise we'd be top, but we're not even half way through the season yet. It's where we are in six months' time that counts.

We've now got a rather tricky looking couple of away games coming up at Walsall and Brighton. Both teams are in quite good form at the moment, and considering Forest's poor record against Walsall in recent seasons, I think I would be rather glad to get a point off them. I would say the same about Brighton, but I am not sure we can afford to draw two successive away matches.

If we can come through the Walsall and Brighton games without too much damage, then we will be in pretty good shape when we have two home games on successive weekends just before Christmas against Northampton and Port Vale respectively.