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?