Forest should take a punt on Pemberton

The Doncaster defeat changed nothing. Our automatic promotion chances were long gone before then anyway, so I don't know why everyone's feeling even more depressed than they were before.

There was nothing remotely surprising about the performance, either. Doncaster totally dominated the game and throughly deserved their three points, and the Forest players as usual just went through the motions and seemed content just to turn up to earn their money and get it over with. But are they really to blame? They are not responsible for the team selection, the formation or the tactics, are they? That is Colin Calderwood's job, and he is failing miserably.

By all accounts, the Forest players absolutely loathe Deadwood and his assistant David Kerslake. That is hardly earth-shattering news because it's been obvious for ages now that they have no faith in the manager. Just recently a few of our players have lost their spark and motivation. Look what has happened to Junior Agogo. Since he returned from Africa, he has been rubbish and been demoted to the bench. He just can't be bothered any more. He was in really good form in August and September, but just like many of his team mates, he seems to have lost interest.

We now have seven games left in which to hold on to our place in the top six, with four of those at home. If we can win three out of four at the City Ground, I think we will be alright, but another demoralising defeat at Carlisle this Tuesday could really make things rather awkward, and I would not bet on us winning the home game against Cheltenham next Saturday. They are fighting relegation, so it will be a big game for both teams, and the bad news is it's another Kids-for-a-Quid game. Forest seem to have a knack of underperforming (even more so than usual) in front of big crowds, so don't bet against Cheltenham getting a result. They did recently beat Leeds at Elland Road, after all.

Perhaps on Monday, we will finally get the news we have been craving – that 'Colin Calderwood has parted company with Nottingham Forest by mutual consent.' But don't hold your breath. I can see him staying until the bitter end. Nigel Doughty, as usual, is hoping that the fans can force him into resigning, so he doesn't have to pay him off. Fortunately, I think the fans will succeed if they try hard enough as we got rid of one of the most stubborn men in football, Gary Megson, so I don't think we will have too many problems rooting out weedy Deadwood.

It's not as if we don't have anyone to replace him. I'm pretty sure that John Pemberton can get us playing well enough to pick up some good results between now and the end of the season. He has worked wonders with the youth and reserve teams. The reserves, of course, have just won the title, with a few games to spare, and they have been playing excellent football. Apparently nobody has a bad word to say about Pemberton, and former striker David Johnson told the Nottingham Evening Post this weekend that he can see Pemberton being a future Forest manager – on a long-term basis. I think he should be given the chance. The players seem to respect him, and if things don't work out, then they don't, but let's at least give him a try! Things can't get much worse than they already are, so come on, Doughty. Do the decent thing for a change and listen to the fans.

Dropped home points have cost us automatic promotion

I think it's safe to say that our automatic promotion hopes are well and truly gone now, despite what Deadwood will tell you.

Even if, in the unlikely event, we beat both Doncaster and Carlisle, the odds will still be very much stacked against us. We'd have to start playing like champions in our last eight games to stand a realistic chance, and it's just not going to happen. We have not been very convincing promotion candidates all season as our away form has been so poor, so why should we expect to go up automatically when Swansea, Doncaster and Carlisle have all been much better than us this season?

Now we've just got to make sure that we secure a play-off place, because that is by no means certain at all. After the difficult trips to Donny and Carlisle, we could find ourselves outside of the top six for the first time in ages, and that would leave us facing a very tense finish to the season as the games start to run out.

I don't think you can blame Forest for not beating Brighton, though. Their goalkeeper, Michel Kuipers, made a number of very good saves, and the side defended very well. We really struggled to break them down. A lot of sides come to the City Ground to play for a point, and when they do that they tend to make it very hard for Forest to play good football. Yesterday's game was really scrappy, although the first half was quite entertaining with both sides enjoying good opportunities.

If we had not drawn so many games at the City Ground this season, we would be looking at automatic promotion, even taking into account our dreadful away form. We have dropped 14 points this season at home from these draws, and some of the games were supposed to be really winnable, such as those against Bournemouth, Oldham, and Northampton.

But overall our home form had been very good, keeping us in the top four for most of the season, but it has started to fall apart just recently, typically just when we have at last seemed to have sorted our away form out. We've not won in our last three games at the City Ground, while we have managed to win two of our last five away matches. Why can't Forest fans have their cake and eat it?

Ten men are better than twelve?

Colin Calderwood must be a very relieved man after Forest's well-earned victory at his former club Northampton on Friday night. Had Forest put in a terrible performance and lost the match, the fans from both sides could have made the atmosphere very uncomfortable for him. As it was all the abuse in the end was directed firmly at the referee Rob Styles, who made a number of controversial decisions, which belied his status as a Premiership official.

For some reason we seem to play quite well with five men at the back away from home, and we have now gone on a five-match unbeaten run on our travels, which has included two victories, so I suppose I must grudgingly congratulate Deadwood for getting something right. Even so, the decision to play James Perch as part of a three-man central defence was a strange one, when you consider Luke Chambers could have played there with Perch at right back instead. That's just typical of Deadwood playing players out of position. I think every player apart from Paul Smith has at some point this season been asked to do a job which they are not designed for. Rumour has it that Grant Holt was being considered as an emergency goalkeeper! Thank god Blackpool have taken him off our hands for the rest of the season on loan. I'm sure he will be in great company along with his donkey friends on the beach!

But back to the game. I thought that we really played very well, and the referee's card-happy antics just made us all the more determined, and did not faze us. I can't really comment on the Perch sending-off, but from what I have read, it was a very harsh decision, and his tackle warranted only a yellow card at best, certainly not a red. I felt really sorry for him. He hasn't had much luck lately at all. He had only just broken back into the first team a few matches ago when Chambers was out injured, and then last week against Walsall, he threw up on the pitch and had to be substituted. Now, unless Forest are successful with an appeal to get his red card overturned, he now faces a three-match ban and another fight to get back in the team again.

Once we were reduced to ten men, I thought the game was only going to go one way, and when Northampton equalised from a bicycle kick to cancel out Brett Ormerod's eighth minute opener, I was resigned to defeat. So it was a pleasant surprise to see Forest roll up their sleeves and get on with it instead of just collapsing. You can say what you want about how poor we have often been this season, but there is definitely a team spirit there somewhere. It just needs to come out a little more often. Although we were all furious with the referee, in hindsight, he probably won us the match. The players might not want to play for Deadwood, but when they have been on the receiving end of unfair officiating, they don't need motivating at all. Now just imagine if we had a manager who could inspire them. I really think we would be flying, because the players proved last night that they have got what it takes if they put in maximum effort – which they all did.

Who cares if the penalty shouldn't have been given? How many times have we had decisions go against us? As they say, it all evens its self out in the end, and we totally deserved the three points for the way we battled with ten men for 70 minutes of the game against an in-form team away from home. I think this has to be the most satisfying victory we have had on our travels this season so far, and it was really important as it keeps our slim automatic promotion hopes alive. Yeovil's win over Doncaster means the gap is down to just six points again, and with back-to-back away trips to Donny and then Carlisle coming up very shortly, things could get very interesting should we beat both of them. But that's a big if. I really don't think Forest can pull off victories at both Doncaster and Carlisle, but stranger things have happened. Personally, I think it's asking rather too much of them, and I've accepted that if we are going to get promoted at all, it will be through the play-offs, although I have to say I am absolutely dreading them.

Give up, Clueless. You're flogging a dead horse

Will someone wake me up when the season's over, please? The end just can't come soon enough, whether we have made it into the play-offs or not.

I didn't expect us to beat Walsall, given that we hadn't managed a victory against them in ten attempts, and there wasn't anything really surprising about the way we played, as we all now know what to expect under Deadwood by now, but Walsall were really quite poor, especially in the first half, and they got a lucky equaliser courtesy of Kelvin Wilson, and yet more dodgy goalkeeping from Paul Smith. They hadn't really looked like scoring until then, and when we took the lead through on-loan Brett Ormerod, it looked like there would only be one winner, but the lead lasted only three minutes, and then it all got rather desperate and scrappy, especially when Deadwood elected to play FOUR strikers, bringing on Junior Agogo and Grant Holt, and sacrificing midfielders Chris Cohen and Matt Thornhill, who had both had good games. We really didn't need four players up front. Not surprisingly, we lost our shape when the substitutions were made. Perhaps I could understand playing four up front if we were something like 4-0 down, but it was 1-1, and we only needed one goal! The phrase 'too many cooks spoil the broth' comes to mind.

At the end of the match, for the first time this season at a home game, we could hear 'Calderwood out' chants. I don't know a single Forest fan who still supports him, except Nigel Doughty, maybe. But who knows what he's thinking? We never hear from him. I don't even bother listening to Deadwood's interviews on the radio any more. He is so boring and predicable and says the same things every time. 'I'm so proud of the players,' he said last night. What? After drawing 1-1 at home against a side that had just lost their last two home games? This man is mental. I just can't stand it any longer. He is absolutely terrible. Why is it so hard for him to pick a 4-4-2 formation, defenders in defence, midfielders in midfield, and strikers up front? As Cloughie so rightly once said: 'Football's a simple game made complicated by idiots.' How come 20,000 Forest fans know what to do, and he doesn't? I just can't understand it. It makes me want to tear my hair out, it really does. I am so flaming angry with these idiots who are ripping Forest apart, and I feel completely helpless that I can do nothing about it.

I'm looking forward to the Northampton game on Friday night – not for the football, but hopefully be part of a crowd that really gets on Deadwood's back, and the home supporters are bound to join in. They really can help us out by highlighting how rubbish Deadwood is. They are in League One, after all, thanks to him, and yet they think he's an idiot just as much as we do. Northampton are in really good form right now, having just beaten Swansea, and victory over Forest would put them within touching distance of the play-offs, whilst simultaneously hammering another nail into their former manager's coffin.

Defeat might have forced Doughty's hand

I will admit that I had mixed feelings about earning a point at Southend last night. Yes, defeat would have not done us any favours in our quest for a play-off place, but it might just have been enough to get Deadwood the sack, or force his resignation, and then with a new manager coming in, give us a fighting chance of winning the play-offs.

I hate losing games, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, and defeats can perversely lead to better things. The fans were baying for Deadwood's blood when Southend scored, and I doubt that the equaliser from Matt Thornhill will have appeased them too much. With Carlisle and Doncaster winning again, we had to win this game, as difficult as it was, to keep our slim automatic promotion chances alive. We're now ten points off the pace, which is quite amazing as little over a week ago we could have been second if we had beaten Carlisle. It looks all over now bar the shouting, which is such a shame as the end of the season could have been so exciting. Now it's just going to peter out with a damp squib.

For the umpteenth time this season, Forest only bothered to play for 45 minutes. They were quite frankly dreadful before the break. Southend dominated, but in the second half we were so much better as Deadwood had realised that his tactics were not working. We had been playing with three strikers – Junior Agogo, Grant Holt, and Brett Ormerod - but all three had been very ineffective, so at half time Holt and Agogo were substituted with Thornhill and Nathan Tyson coming on to replace them. Surprise surprise, the change in formation made a big difference and Forest were a different proposition altogether. If we had a more tactically astute manager, we might even see Forest play well for 90 minutes.

A few results went our way last night. Leeds suffered a shock home defeat at the hands of relegation threatened Cheltenham, which keeps them five points below us, just outside of the top six, and our weekend opponents Walsall suffered a second successive home defeat in a few days, so hopefully their confidence will be very low when they come to us, as we bid to win our first match against them in eleven attempts. Now I could understand if it was Chelsea or Arsenal or somebody like that, but Walsall?! Why do Forest find them so hard to beat? God forbid we land them in the play-offs. If things were to stay as they are now in the table, that's exactly what would happen. Fortunately it is really wide open at the moment, and anybody in the top half of the table can still make the top six. It's now up to Forest to concentrate on keeping themselves in there, and in their last eleven games of the season try and find some consistency so they can at least go into the play-offs feeling confident.

Deadwood must go now to save Forest's season

This has not been a very good week for Forest by any stretch of the imagination. This time last week we were all looking forward to the Carlisle game with the knowledge that victory would put us back in second place. Six days later, and we now suddenly find ourselves eight points adrift of Doncaster, and now face almost certain humiliation in the play-offs – if we should be so lucky to even qualify for them.

The Carlisle game was always going to be difficult, but only managing a goalless draw at Crewe, who lie just a few points above the relegation zone, is nothing short of a disgrace. Traditionally Gresty Road has been a happy hunting ground, but not on this occasion. Crewe didn't trouble us at all, and it would only have taken one goal to finish them off, but the players didn't seem bothered, and it's blatantly obvious to just about everyone – except Nigel Doughty and Mark Arthur it seems – that Colin Calderwood has well and truly shot it. The players do not want to play for him. The supporters can't stand him. He's at the point of no return. If by some miracle we end up getting promoted through the play-offs, do you really want this buffoon unleashed on the Championship? We would almost certainly come straight back down with him in charge. Doughty would not learn from his mistakes of three seasons ago and just leave it until too late before he sacked him.

At least if we stay in League One, we will get rid of Deadwood, and then we can start moving forward. There is no way he will stay. Arthur has intimated that he is good as gone anyway if we don't go up. Why they are leaving it until the end of the season, though, I don't know. I think the fact that we are well placed for a play-off place and have 12 games remaining would be a good selling-point for a new manager. As usual, you get people saying 'it's all very well sacking Calderwood, but who do we bring in?' Well, I'm sorry, but that does not wash with me. If Doughty can't find a suitable replacement, then quite frankly he should not be Chairman. In my opinion, he shouldn't be Chairman anyway, but that's another issue for now.

There was an interesting suggestion on Talk Forest that the reserve manager John Pemberton should take over for the rest of the season. I actually think that's a good call. He's done really well with the second string, taking them thirteen points clear of the chasing pack. He's won 13 out of 14 games in Division One Central, so he must be doing something right. I'm not for one minute suggesting that he has what it takes to make the grade as a first team manager, but I think he would be capable of seeing us through to the end of the season. Remember what happened with Charlie McParland and Frank Barlow? The players were so relieved to be finally rid of Gary Megson and they went on a wonderful winning run, which only just stopped short of landing us a play-off place. I don't think McParland and Barlow had much to do with it. The players were so rejuvenated that they were practically managing themselves. I'm not saying that the same thing would happen this time, but I am absolutely sure we'd see a positive change in the players' attitude.

I just feel totally empty about the rest of the season if Deadwood remains in charge. But if a new manager came in on Monday morning, I would feel so excited. Come on, Forest, please, for god's sake do something right for once.

Don't give up hope yet. Promotion is still possible

I felt like a horse had kicked me in the gut last night. Not just because we lost to one of our main promotion rivals, but because I had a pounding headache as well.

I burst into tears at the end of the game, which is not something I do very often these days where Forest are concerned, because I have got really used to it, and they are no longer the only thing that makes me really happy, but because I was feeling so ill and tired, things just got on top of me and I felt rock bottom.

Having finally got rid of the headache and a good night's sleep behind me, I feel a lot better now, although the reality of Forest's automatic promotion hopes being damaged by our first home defeat in 15 matches is still there, and that is not going to go away.

We actually didn't play too badly at all. There wasn't much to choose between the two sides, and the game looked like it was heading for a draw until a mix-up between Paul Smith and the usually fautless Kelvin Wilson led to Carlisle's goal, which sadly proved to be the winner and put Carlisle in second place – five points ahead of Forest.

It really has been a bad weekend for us as with away wins for Doncaster, Walsall and Leeds and us losing to Carlisle. We don't even look assured of a play-off spot, never mind automatic promotion. The first thing we need to do is make sure that we don't lose our place in the top six, and to do that we've just got to concentrate on winning games. If we do that, that five point gap may be reduced and we will be right back in there, and seeing as we still have to play both Carlisle and Doncaster, albeit away from home, we shouldn't lose heart just yet. There's still 13 games to go, and neither we, Carlisle, nor Doncaster will win all of them. It's up to Forest to make sure that they drop the fewest amount of points between now and May. It's true we are now relying on a few snookers, but with two months to go still, there is still hope, and if our automatic promotion bid is ultimately to prove unsuccessful, we still get another chance with the play-offs, providing of course that we qualify for them.