Now's your chance, Forest, to make amends for last season

We all laughed at Colin Calderwood when he wouldn't shut up about automatic promotion even when we were eleven points away from second place. But in recent weeks Forest have gone on a very good run of form, and have capitalised on Carlisle's imploding by clawing back the deficit to just ONE point thanks to Lewis McGugan's 84th minute strike at Hartlepool. Now all we have to do is beat Yeovil on Saturday and hope that Doncaster fail to win at relegation-fighting Cheltenham, and then we are up!

Of course, there is the not very small matter of Leeds possibly winning their appeal to get their 15 points reinstated, which would hand them automatic promotion, and that would render Forest's, Doncaster's and Carlisle's bid to go up futile. But faced with the threat of being sued by whoever misses out on second place as a result, will the Football Association really give in? Let's pray that they don't, as everybody is so excited about Saturday, and if Leeds do win on Thursday, it will be very depressing and will leave a bitter taste in everybody's mouths.

The only good thing to come out of it would be that if Forest's destiny is indeed the play-offs, they would avoid having to play Leeds, who are the only team I fear would be too much for us. I dread us going to Elland Road in front of over 30,000 people for such a crucial game. We nearly got a victory there earlier this year, but Leeds were then going through a bit of a bad spell, and now they're in very good form again. They also won at the City Ground back in August, albeit in the last minute and undeservedly, so Forest won't be confident of beating them. As things stand if we finish third and Leeds in sixth place we will play them, which is quite ironic really as it's supposed to work out that the third placed team get to play the weakest team.

Assuming that Leeds lose their appeal, Saturday's home game with Yeovil will be a huge occasion. Every Forest fan worth their salt will be there, so the City Ground will be a sell-out with close to 30,000 people and the atmosphere should be awesome as the crowd roars the Reds on to victory while simultaneously listening nervously on the radio for news from elsewhere. From a neutral point of view, you really couldn't ask for a better way to end the season, but for those of a Forest persuasion, it's going to be extremely tense and nerve wracking to say the least. Not only are we desperate for a Forest victory, but we are all Cheltenham fans for the day as well. I'm not sure my nerves can take it!

I have to keep reminding myself that we are lucky to be in this position in the first place, having been so far away a few weeks ago, but now that we are here I'm getting greedy and, yes, I will be hugely disappointed if we don't win promotion on Saturday. I have this really sneaky feeling we're going to do it. Cheltenham are scrapping for their lives and I think are more than capable of picking up at least a point, particularly as their home form is pretty good and Doncaster have not won since March on their travels. And as long as we win our game, it doesn't matter what Carlisle do at home to Bournemouth. Of the three teams involved, dare I say it, but Forest may even be favourites! And what a fitting way to win promotion it would be to go up automatically against the very team who ended our play-off dream almost a year ago. And with Arron Davies scoring the winning goal.

Hang on a minute. We can still go up automatically!

Say it very, very quietly, but with just two games to go, Forest are back in the automatic promotion race. After beating relegated Luton, we're just an agonising three points from second place thanks to Southend's late winner at Carlisle and Doncaster only managing to draw at Leyton Orient.

If we win at Hartlepool next Saturday it will go to the last game of the season – against Yeovil in front of a near capacity crowd. If we go second next Saturday, a win against Yeovil would take us up! How amazing would that be? It would be so wonderful, and because it's against Yeovil, it would be the best way to banish those dreadful memories of the play-off semi-final defeat of almost a year ago. It would be like something out of a fairy tale.

However, as nice as it is to dream, we've got to be realistic. While the gap is only three points, Doncaster and Carlisle have a couple of very easy looking home fixtures in their last couple of games against Luton and Bournemouth respectively. Luton have a dreadful away record with just one win all season, and being relegated, have nothing to play for at all, but pride, of which they don't seem to have much at all. Bournemouth, however, are in very good form lately, and they might still be able to avoid relegation on the last day of the season. With both Carlisle and Bournemouth needing victory for very different reasons, perhaps they'll cancel each other out and it will be a draw. All we need is for Carlisle to lose at Millwall, which isn't out of the question as Millwall need the points to stave off the threat of relegation.

There is also a possibility that Leeds United could win their appeal to get their 15 points back. The result of the appeal will be revealed before May 1st – a few days before the Yeovil game. Imagine Forest are in second place by then, and then Leeds get their points back. That would make it impossible for Forest to go up by beating Yeovil. I pity whoever misses out on automatic promotion if they do win their appeal. I would be absolutely livid if it was Forest. I can't see how they can get their points back when they signed an agreement which waived their rights for appeal. No wonder they're called 'Dirty Leeds'. They'll be 'Filthy despicable Leeds' if they steal promotion from under somebody's noses.

Play-off place almost guaranteed, so now we can relax...for a bit

Our play-off place is all but mathematically assured, so it's nice to be able to relax a little before it all gets horribly tense and exciting again in mid-May. Now that all talk of automatic promotion has finally been silenced, Forest have rather annoyingly started to pick up some good results away from home, which might have been a lot more significant had they come a month earlier.

We didn't really deserve our lead courtesy of Nathan Tyson's goal, at half time at Tranmere. They had been all over us, and we had scored with just about our only chance of the first half, but we did improve after the break and man of the match Wes Morgan's header, his first goal of the campaign, gave us a comfortable two-goal cushion, from which Tranmere rarely looked capable of coming back.

We're now ten points clear of seventh place with only Walsall being able to catch us – providing they win all of their remaining four games, and Forest do very badly in their remaining three. It's not very likely, especially as we have two easy-looking home games against Luton and Yeovil and a trip to Hartlepool. I know it's a very foolish thing to take anything for granted with Forest these days, but I'm pretty sure not even they are capable of blowing their play-off place, even if they wanted to!

To be quite honest, I feel a little bit apathetic about our last three remaining matches now. Next Saturday's home game with Luton is a bit meaningless with the Hatters already being relegated. I'm still going to go, but I just don't think the Forest players will be up for it at all. They will not want to exert themselves too much in case they get injured and miss the play-offs. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of key players are rested for the remaining matches so they are a lot fresher when the semi-finals get underway.

If things stay as they are in the table our semi-final opponents would be Southend, a team we have taken four points off this season. We thrashed them 4-1 back in November at the City Ground and we got a decent point at Roots Hall a few weeks ago, so we are very capable of beating them, but we said the same thing about Yeovil last year, and look what happened. If Forest are at their best they are capable of being a match for any side in the Division, but Forest's good performances this season have been few and far between, and when they're under any kind of pressure, they tend to freeze, so I don't think there's any point in saying who I'd rather be drawn against in the play-offs. I just want them over and done with one way or another. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be...

We're **** and we're sick of it

I'm beginning to come round to the idea that those fans who preferred to stay at home in the warm and watch the Liverpool-Arsenal game were right all along.

I am not sure why I asked my dad to take me to the game now. With our play-off place almost secured and automatic promotion disappearing fast over the horizon, our home game against Bristol Rovers could be described as a 'nothing game' really, and apart from another trademark sublime free kick from Lewis McGugan, there was very little to get excited about at all. The players looked like they couldn't be bothered, and our usually solid defence was a real mess, especially our full backs Matt Lockwood and Luke Chambers, who were both dreadful.

Chambers has the excuse of being played out of position all season, but Lockwood is a left back, but last night looked like he'd never played there before in his life. Either he is just not capable, or he just couldn't be bothered to put the effort in, I am not sure. I just don't want to see his name on the team sheet again. Hopefully Julian Bennett's hamstring injury is not too serious and he will be back in the team very soon. He is rightly many people's choice for Player of the Season, which is quite a relevation considering how poorly he began the campaign.

It really was a bad performance by Forest, but how many times have we said that this season? I've got used to it now. Until Deadwood gets lost, we have no hope of going anywhere. We'll probably qualify for the play-offs, but how on earth are we going to win them, playing as we did last night? I just don't see it at all. I think it's probably best if we lose them anyway as I can't face another season of Deadwood, even if it is in the Championship. I would rather us have a good season in League One under a decent manager, and then win promotion knowing we fully deserved it. Some of our performances this season have not even been of non-league standard, they've been so bad. While that may be a slight exaggeration, I don't think it's too far from being accurate. At least non-league players play with a bit of passion, something which has all too often been distinctly lacking from our players this season.

Forest find their form as play-offs approach

Now that we are seven points clear of seventh place with just five games remaining, I am very confident that we will qualify for the play-offs. With three victories from our last four matches, it appears that Forest have hit a bit of form at just the right time. It's just a pity it has come too late for automatic promotion.

I thought that, one or two defensive mishaps aside, we played quite well against Cheltenham. We didn't really have to be at our best to beat them as they were so poor, but we did do well to come back from that setback we suffered when out of nowhere Cheltenham suddenly were able to break free and score from their first chance of the game. Fortunately, though, their lead didn't last long as Junior Agogo, now wearing red boots instead of those unlucky orange ones, restored parity six minutes later.

I was worried when Julian Bennett was forced to go off injured, because I thought we would lose our shape, as Matt Lockwood, the obvious replacement for Bennett, was not on the bench, so Chris Cohen was asked to play at left back, a position which he has played in West Ham's reserves. Fortunately, though, my fears were allayed somewhat when 'goal machine' Luke Chambers added to his impressive tally with his second goal in as many games to give us the lead just before half time, and just a few minutes into the second half, Agogo put the game out of Cheltenham's reach with a 25-yard screamer.

It's just as well that Agogo has started scoring again, as it seems that we can't rely on Nathan Tyson to stay fit for more than one match at a time as his troublesome hamstring injury refuses to go away. Agogo has been accused by a lot of people of being a bit big-headed since his return from the Africa Nations Cup, and he has at times looked uninterested, but he had a good game yesterday, and we really need him to be on top form in the play-offs, don't we? We have to put it in the back of our minds that he wants to leave Forest in the summer, and just get behind all the players because we all need to be on the same side as it will not help our play-off chances if we don't get behind the team 100%.

The orange boots may have been unlucky for Agogo, but they seemed to work for Garath McCleary. He was handed his full debut, playing on the right of a three-man strikeforce, and he showed a lot of promise with some very good touches. I think he is an exciting prospect, and Arron Davies could find it a struggle to get into the team now when he returns from injury.

If there was one negative about the performance, it was Kelvin Wilson's poor defending. He had until very recently been very solid in the heart of defence, but things have not being going right for him lately, and against Cheltenham he looked really nervous at the back, and gave the ball away a couple of times in a dangerous position. It is quite worrying that he is out of form at such a crucial stage of the season. We need him to be at his very best in the play-offs. Perhaps he could do with being rested for a couple of matches once our play-off place is secure as I think he has only missed one or two matches all season.

We can go some way to making sure of our place in the top six if we beat Bristol Rovers on Tuesday night. Some silly people are still talking about automatic promotion and will have half an eye on Carlisle's game against Swansea, but I'm just thinking ahead to the play-offs now. Well, to be quite honest, I'd rather not think about them as they make me feel sick, but they're happening, whether we like it or not, and we had better get used to it.

Win just an April Fool's Day gimmick...or the start of better things to come?

It's not April Fool's Day any more, and yet I still see the headlines on teletext that Forest won at Carlisle last night! We pulled off the seemingly impossible mission of beating a side that had won their previous FOURTEEN home games. And as if that wasn't freaky enough, Colin Deadwood conceded in his post-match interview that he had made mistakes!

I had very little enthusiasm for the game before kick off, so certain was I that we would turn in yet another pathetic performance and be on the receiving end of a deflating defeat. Carlisle's red hot home form in contrast with our wishy-washy record away from the City Ground surely will have had many people thinking it was going to be a foregone conclusion. But it turned out to be anything but as Forest actually, shock of all shocks, played really well!

The reason why we were good was simple – the tactics. For the past two months we had been playing five men at the back in away games, but uncharacteristicly, under-fire Deadwood decided to play a more attacking 4-3-3 formation last night, and as a result we were much better than we had been at Doncaster. We had a good amount of possession and made Carlisle look pretty ordinary. The three strikers didn't get into the game much owing to a lack of service, but the midfielders played well, in particular Chris Cohen, who played a great part in substitute Garath McCleary's first goal for the Club in stoppage time, which made certain of the three points, which we were clinging on to after Luke Chambers had given us the lead fourteen minutes from time with a powerful header from a free kick.

I didn't know anything about McCleary when he joined Forest from non-league Bromley a couple of months ago, but Deadwood predicted that he would make his mark in the first team at some stage this season, and he has been proven right. He took his goal really well, and if he is given a run in the first team, that may just be the first of many. He can play on the right wing or as a striker, so his versatility will be very welcome, and I think he is going to turn into a real City Ground favourite.

I usually fall asleep when Deadwood is interviewed on the radio, but I was startled last night when he made the astonishing confession that he had got the formation wrong at Doncaster! He has never ever said anything like that before since he came here! If that is not evidence that he knew that his job was on the line, then I don't know what more you want. That coupled with the change in tactics seemed to suggest that a defeat or even a draw might well have cost him his job. Now, following this victory, it looks very likely that he will hang on until the end of the season.

With just six games left, including four at home, starting with a couple of (dare I say it?) winnable home matches against Cheltenham and Bristol Rovers, I admit it probably makes sense not to change the manager now, unless our play-off place is in severe danger. If things go according to plan against Cheltenham and Rovers, we will have been virtually guaranteed of a play-off spot. We all know that, barring a miracle of epic proportions, we have no chance of overhauling Doncaster and Carlisle for that second automatic spot. Nine points is just too big a gap to make up at this stage of the season. It's possible, but very improbable, and Forest just don't do miracles.