New boy Earnie is sure to score a sackful

Forest today completed the transfer of Robbie Earnshaw from Derby, making him our first summer signing. Hopefully there are more players of his calibre to come.

It's brilliant to see Forest making the headlines again by spending big money on players. £2.65 million is peanuts to the big Premiership clubs, but to us it's quite a lot of money, although I don't think it's a gamble as Earnshaw has a prolific record at every club he's played for in the Championship, as well as scoring a respectable 11 goals for West Bromich Albion in the Premiership three seasons ago. Three of those were in the same match when West Brom destroyed Charlton, a team we will be playing next season!

Earnshaw is also a regular Wales international and boasts 39 caps to his name, and has scored 13 goals for them so far. He was most prolific at his first club Cardiff City, where he netted 85 times in 178 games, before being sold on to West Bromich Albion in 2004 for £3 million. After two seasons there, he joined Norwich in the Championship, where he scored 27 goals in 45 games. This impressive strike rate persuaded newly promoted Derby to shell out £3.5 million for his services, but he struggled to make an impact at Pride Park as he was mostly used as a substitute, and only scored once in the Premiership for the Rams all season.

But don't let his record at Derby fool you. He had a bad relationship with manager Paul Jewell and the Sheep were so awful anyway that it's no wonder he didn't score many goals. With such an excellent record at all his other clubs and for Wales, I have no concerns over him at all. Now it's just a question of who partners him in attack next season. Will it be Nathan Tyson, Junior Agogo, or somebody else?

The papers are now saying that Tyson has turned down his contract offer and could be on his way to Bristol City after they tabled a £750,000 bid. I thought he wanted to stay. He told the Evening Post a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to sign a new deal, but if the rumours are true, then perhaps Forest aren't all that desperate to keep him. Considering his injury problems of the last couple of seasons, I don't really blame them, and there's a big question mark over whether he'd be any good in the Championship anyway.

Meanwhile, Agogo has done an apparent u-turn and decided to stay at the City Ground. That must be because no 'big' clubs have shown an interest in him. For what it's worth, I do think he would do quite well in the Championship, but he will have to work hard and show a good attitude, because since he came back from Africa, he has got too big for his boots, and consequently lost his place in the starting line-up.

I've read that Nigel Doughty has earmarked £10 million for new players this summer, which I hope will be spent wisely. Colin Calderwood, for all his other faults, has made some very shrewd signings during his two-year tenure. Three years ago, Joe Kinnear and Gary Megson made some appalling decisions in the transfer market and flooded the Club with rubbish like Gareth Taylor, Eugene Dadi and Nicky Eaden. I can hardly believe the side that we put out in the Championship last time round. No wonder we went down! Our current side on paper at least looks a million times better than that one already, and with the addition of quality players like Earnshaw, I'm confident we will be capable of achieving at least midtable respectability next season.

Commons as muck!

So that's it then. He's gone. Despite winning promotion back to the Championship, Kris Commons has decided to do the dirty on us and walk out for nothing, and is now locked in talks with the sworn enemy, Derby County!!

I would not be quite so bothered if it was any other club, but Derby?! It just makes me sick to think a so-called Forest fan could even contemplate joining their biggest rivals. Didn't Stuart Pearce once say that he'd rather sign on the dole than join them? Enough said. And he wasn't even from Nottingham. Commons has proven what we thought all along. He's just a greedy, fat money-grabbing little Judas who deserves to be tagged with every abusive epithet you can think of. Just you wait until he returns to the City Ground. The abuse from the home fans will be the worst you've ever heard. That's if he gets in their team. He spent large parts of his Forest career either injured, or on the bench. In fact, I always thought we played a lot better without him anyway.

He wasn't much of a team player really, and I got frustrated with his constant shooting from long-range, which sometimes would pay off, but more often than not would be hopelessly off target. He also suffered from fitness problems, and was in and out of the team. He didn't score as many goals as I thought he would this season, although of course we'll always be grateful for his strike that helped secure promotion on the final day.

I've always felt that having Commons in the team has stifled our creativity in midfield because the other players

would rely on him too much to come up with something special. But when he was not in the side, the players had to work harder and try other things, and we picked up some good results when he wasn't playing, so I am not worried about how we will cope, because I think we have better players than him, such as Lewis McGugan, who like Commons, can hit a good ball from long-distance.

Colin Calderwood says he plans to continue playing a 4-3-3 formation next season in the Championship, which sounds to me like he won't bother playing wingers again. Maybe that was a deciding factor in Commons' desire to leave as he probably felt that he would be left on the substitutes' bench a lot just like he was this season.

Hopefully we will sign some good players to make up for Commons' loss. Robert Earnshaw is reportedly almost a done deal, which is good news, if true as he has an excellent record in the Championship and is still only 27. Just because he was a flop for Derby in the Premiership, does not mean he's turned into a bad player overnight. After all Derby were so useless that anybody would have struggled in that team!

We've also offered Nathan Tyson a two-year extension to his contract, and he has said that he wants to stay, which is surprising to me as I thought he hated Calderwood. I do have concerns over him, though. A) is he good enough for the Championship and B) Can he manage to stay fit for more than five minutes?

I'd love to think Tyson would do well for Forest in the Championship and strike up a really good partnership with Earnshaw, but he does suffer from more than his fair share of injury problems, and if this continues next season, Forest may well give up on him.

Calderwood has said that he wants to give the players who won promotion from League One a chance to prove themselves in the Championship, but the fact is we do need strengthening all over the pitch.

We need another goalkeeper, possibly as a replacement for Paul Smith, or as back-up. Mark Bunn from Northampton is a rumoured target, and before you groan that Calderwood keeps being linked with his old club, he is actually a good young 'keeper and is probably ready to make the step up to the Championship.

We also must sign a right back, who is actually meant to play there! Luke Chambers did not do a terrible job in that position, and indeed scored eight goals this season, but he's a central defender, and on too many occasions really struggled against a pacy winger. I don't think he'd cut it at right back in the Championship, but as a central defender, who knows?

Kelvin Wilson and Wes Morgan proved to be a brilliant partnership in the heart of defence and kept an amazing 24 clean sheets, but whether they would be good enough in the Championship is another matter. Both have played there before, but Morgan had before last season been rather shaky

and struggled to hold down a place in the side.

I think we need to sign another left back as well, to challenge Julian Bennett. Bennett was rightly named Player of the Year at the end of the season, but whether he can be as good in the Championship, I don't know. We have to sign a reserve left back anyway now that Matt Lockwood has left for Colchester, so it could be that we end up with somebody better than Bennett.

Apart from the obvious need to replace Commons, I think we have a good set of midfielders and only need one or two additions. McGugan, Chris Cohen and Sammy Clingan, I am sure will do really well. Clingan has shone on a bigger stage for Northern Ireland, and Cohen at times last season looked a really classy player and has even played in the Premiership for West Ham.

As for the strikers, I've already mentioned Tyson and the possible signing of Earnshaw. Junior Agogo is probably going to leave, so we need to replace him as well. Just as long as Grant Holt doesn't play for Forest again, that's all that matters!

Four days on...and I'm still on Cloud 9

Have you come back down to Earth yet? Because I haven't!
I still can't really take it all in. I know we haven't won the Premiership or the European Cup, but the manner in which we snatched promotion on the very last day of the season after being eleven points adrift just over a month ago is something you usually only dream about.

I'm finding it really hard to concentrate on much else at the moment. All I want to do is think about Forest and just relive those magical scenes at the City Ground over and over again. I keep watching the celebrations on Forest World and I'm still not sick of them. It leaves a lump in my throat every time I watch it. Everything about that day was so romantic and just so well...god damn perfect. And I haven't even mentioned Derby and Leicester being relegated yet!

The past seven days have been the most nerve-wracking and exhilarating in my life. I had so much to worry about that I thought I was going to go insane. First of all I had to go to London on Wednesday to go on a trip on the Millennium Wheel for my belated birthday trip. I was worried that terrorists would strike London that day and I wouldn't live to see what happened to Forest on Saturday.

Fortunately nothing happened and I enjoyed the day, but Thursday was absolute torture for me as I had to wait all day for the Leeds verdict to come in. It was sheer and utter agony as the clock ticked down to 5pm. If Leeds got their 15 points back, or even some of them it would be Game Over for Forest's promotion chances, so imagine my relief when the Sky Sports News presenter casually announced that Leeds would be getting NO points back! I could have cried. It was then that I began to get a gut feeling that Forest were going to do it. We had not come this far for it to go wrong at the last hurdle. I had not gone through all this worrying for nothing, surely?

When the day of reckoning finally came, although rain was forecast for much of the country, when I arrived in Nottingham it was sunny and beautiful, which augured well for Forest. I would usually go to Waterstones before a home game to kill time, but today was such a special occasion that I knew I had to do something different, so I went along to the Market Square and watched a football event that was taking place there. Radio Nottingham were there and interviewed a couple of fans who had made the trip over from Northern Ireland. I sat and read the paper with the chimes of the big clock ringing in the background as kick-off time got closer and closer.

I then made my way down to the City Ground and just hung about for about an hour feeling as nervous as hell, and at 2pm walked through the turnstiles thinking 'when I come out of here we could be in the Championship.'

I've no idea how my nerves survived the next three hours. It certainly helped when we went into a 2-0 lead and Cheltenham scored, but later on when Yeovil pulled it back to 3-2 and Doncaster's equaliser was announced on the radio, you could almost hear the thudding sound of thousands of Forest fans' hearts sinking. Forest were at that point looking quite jaded, and I had an awful feeling that Yeovil were going to score a last-minute equaliser or something, because, well, that's what happens to Forest.

But about ten minutes later one almighty loud cheer reverberated around the City Ground when news broke that Cheltenham had gone back into the lead, and it was then that I knew we'd done it.

I'm still feeling excited even now as I write this four days after the event. We can enjoy this for the next two months until the preparations for the new season get underway in July. I don't think I'm going to be bored this summer as Forest will be signing loads of new players and the message boards will be red hot with rumours of comings and goings.

I just can't believe how well this season has gone for Forest. Not only are we promoted back to the Championship, but our two East Midlands rivals have been relegated! Derby are back in the same league as us, and Leicester have traded places with us in League One! How amazing is that? Not only that, but Forest won their reserves League and the Forest ladies were promoted to the Premier League. To think how depressed we have been at times this season. If only we knew what was around the corner. It's just unbelievable.

You weren't dreaming! The Reds are going UP!!!

WOW! WOW! WOW! I can't believe we've done it! The fairytale I was talking about a couple of weeks ago has come true. We are back in the Championship, and we don't have to worry about those nasty play-offs any more. They are somebody else's problem!

It really was an absolutely magical day at the City Ground yesterday. The atmosphere was just amazing. I couldn't hear the radio commentary it was so loud, so my plan to follow the Cheltenham game through BBC Radio Nottingham rather went out of the window, but the cheers of the crowd told me everything I needed to know, although there was always the risk that some false information would get passed round, as was the case earlier on when we thought Cheltenham had scored.

Kris Commons had earlier in the week told the press that he believed that if Forest took an early lead it could really give them an advantage, and that's exactly what happened when newly crowned Player of the Year Julian Bennett rifled home a superb 25-yard shot 12 minutes into the match. And then five minutes later Commons himself made it 2-0 and now it seemed that the only game we had to worry about was the one taking place at Cheltenham.

However, our comfortable two-goal cushion lasted only a couple of minutes as Yeovil responded immediately as the Forest defence was caught napping. But that setback was tempered with the happy news that Cheltenham had taken the lead against Doncaster, who would now need to get two goals if they were to stay in second place, and things just got better and better for Forest as Lewis McGugan in typical fashion restored Forest's two-goal advantage with a well-executed free kick that came at the end of a remarkable opening half-hour of football.

At half time things were looking extremely good for Forest, but that didn't stop me feeling sick and feeling as if I was going to pass out at any moment. 45 minutes plus injury time stood between ourselves and the Championship, and anything could happen in the second half. I remembered feeling exactly the same during the interval at the play-off semi-final second leg last season. I remember breaking down at half time because Forest had this slender 2-1 lead, but even though the balance was tipped more in our favour this time, I still felt awful, thinking that Forest were going to throw it all away again.

And for a short while it looked like everything was going to go wrong in the second half when we started to fall apart a little bit. We lost both James Perch and Luke Chambers to injury, so we had no recognised right back on the pitch. Kelvin Wilson had to go there, which meant Ian Breckin had to come on and play in central defence, and no sooner had he come on the pitch when Yeovil pulled a goal back, and Forest fans' hearts sank as news came in that Doncaster had equalised with just under 15 minutes left. At that point I thought it was all over.

But it wasn't! The City Ground erupted once more when news filtered through that Cheltenham had scored again with just five minutes left, and as Carlisle were being held by Bournemouth, even a draw at this stage would take Forest up. It was absolutely unbearable as we willed the last few minutes away plus the three minutes of injury time. Fortunately we were attacking the Yeovil end in the last minute of stoppage time, and if my memory is correct, it was Junior Agogo who had the ball when the whistle sounded and confirmed that we were going up to the Championship. No sooner had the referee blown for full time when thousands of deliriously happy people spilled on to the City Ground pitch, and several of the Forest players were mobbed as they made their way to the changing rooms.

Once the pitch had finally been cleared, the players came back out to do their end of season lap of honour, and unlike previous seasons, this was a genuine lap of celebration. Even the Yeovil fans stayed behind to join in with the applause, which was such a lovely touch. I suppose they owed us one after we had done the same for them last year. The Forest fans joined in with the chorus of Mull of Kintyre which boomed out over the tannoy as the jubilant players walked around the ground with beaming smiles on their faces.

Then the crowd invaded the pitch again, but the players seemed to be loving it. I couldn't resist going on there myself. There was no way I could stay in the stands with all this going on, and I didn't think there was any threat of arrest as how could anybody arrest a football fan for being so happy that their team was promoted. So I went on and walked all over the pitch just lapping up the awesome atmosphere. I've no idea if all the players were still there, but I did catch sight of Paul Smith having his photograph taken with some fans.

I found it so hard to leave the ground, but I had a train to catch within half an hour. I was planning to stay in Nottingham for a bit longer, but in the end I decided to go home after all as I was eager to see it all on Sky Sports News and talk about it on the internet, so I caught my usual train home with just a few minutes to spare before it left. There were quite a few Forest fans on there as well as some Yeovil supporters, and everyone was in really good spirits.

When I got home, my mum told me how she had sat on the edge of her seat watching the results come in on Sky Sports. She can't stand football normally, but she knows how much Forest mean to me, and she said she had a tear in her eye when she found out we had gone up. I thought I was going to cry at the City Ground, but I didn't actually. I have shed a few tears since I got home, though. I just can't get over the sheer miracle of it, I really can't.

We were ELEVEN points adrift of Carlisle only five weeks ago. When we lost that home game to them, we looked dead in the water and even our play-off place was in doubt. And yet still Colin Calderwood wouldn't concede that we had shot our chance of going up automatically. We all thought he was mad, and everybody hated him and wanted him sacked. As Forest teetered on the brink of going out of the play-off places altogether, talk of his sacking was rife. When Forest visited his old club Northampton on 21st March, they had not won in their last four games, and defeat against an in-form Cobblers side would have made Calderwood's job virtually untenable. But Calderwood managed to survive as Forest won at the Sixfields, which gave them renewed belief that they could win games away from home against in-form sides.

But a week later we were beaten at Doncaster on the back of yet another torrid performance away from home. We looked a million miles from being automatic promotion candidates, and with a daunting looking trip to Carlisle coming just a few days later, things looked bleak and everybody was dreading more humiliation in the play-offs.

Little did we know, though, what was just around the corner. Despite being pitted against the remarkable statistic of Carlisle winning their previous fourteen home matches, Forest went to Brunton Park and pulled off a shock 2-0 victory, which really boosted their confidence, while at the same time giving Carlisle a wobble. They only managed to win one of their last six games and suffered three successive defeats, while Forest simultaneously won six of their last seven, which enabled them to draw level with Carlisle and go above them on goal difference. Doncaster, however, continued to edge ahead, but when Forest reduced the gap to a mere point with just one game to go, Doncaster knew that they would probably have to beat Cheltenham to go up automatically as Forest had a very good chance of beating Yeovil, who had nothing to play for, in front of their own supporters.

Last season on the final day we had the chance of going up if we beat Crewe providing that Bristol City failed to beat an already-relegated Rotherham side at Ashton Gate, but that was never very likely. But this year it was different as Cheltenham were fighting for their lives, and Doncaster were away, not at home, and they had not won for two months on their travels. There was every chance that Forest would find themselves in second place by the end of the afternoon, and although we all daydreamed about it happening, nobody actually could believe it when it all came true.