Naive Calderwood will cost us promotion again

I'm absolutely seething. The 3-0 defeat at Gillingham was nothing to do with Gillingham being brilliant, or the Forest players playing badly. It was purely down to Colin Calderwood's (Deadwood I shall now call him) complete lack of tactical nouse, and his negative mindset. I just can't get my head round his decision to play Kelvin Wilson at left back when we desperately needed him in central defence.

I'm sick and tired of Deadwood playing players in positions for which they are not designed, and then leaving players who do play in those positions on the bench. What is going on in that head of his?

We had four central defenders at the back yesterday. And while Luke Chambers has done a good job as a right back, if Deadwood thinks he can make a decent left back out of Wilson, he's sorely mistaken. And the fact that Wilson's poor back header cost us the third goal should have been enough to convince Deadwood that he is not cut out to play there. As a central defender Wilson is absolutely brilliant, and had he played as one yesterday, I doubt the scoreline would have been so embarrassing.

If Deadwood is picking James Perch and Wilson to play at left back, then that says a lot about what he thinks of Matt Lockwood. OK, so Lockwood has had a few poor games, but given time he could turn out to be a decent player. After all, he was not voted the best left back in League One last year for nothing. I thought the whole point of signing him was so he could link up with Kris Commons, but since Commons can't even hold a place down in the side at the moment, either, that idea seems to have been put to bed.

I've gone through phases this season of backing Deadwood and wanting him sacked, but just recently his team selections and tactics have got more bizarre. It's just like last season all over again when we hit a rocky patch in December and ended up throwing away what had for so long looked like certain promotion. Only this time around, promotion has not at any point looked by any means certain at all, and unless Deadwood grows a brain cell or two between now and May, I can't see us troubling the top two. We are still in second place at the moment, but we will surely not stay there for long. We don't even have our home form to fall back on any more, as we are now struggling to put away teams like Northampton on our own pitch. There seems to be a real lack of confidence permeating the whole team at the moment, and I'm not sure what can be done to bring it back.