Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Super Camp!!

If somebody said to me after the Cardiff defeat a few weeks ago that we would get five points from our next three away trips to Crystal Palace, Derby and Bristol City, I would have asked if they were feeling alright.

When we lost to Cardiff, I thought that was it, we're going down. But then a few days later we managed to overturn the odds and defeat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park and bring an end to our awful six-game losing streak on our travels. That victory came as a very timely fillip as we prepared for the trip to Derby. Another good performance there aided by a huge slice of refereeing incompetence earned us a deserved point, and despite us being ravaged by injury and illness for the home game against Birmingham, we dominated the game and should have walked away with all three points.

I had no idea what to expect against Bristol City, though. They were just outside the play-off places, so a draw would be a good result, although considering our parlous position at the foot of the Championship, we really could do with another win. And we did make a good fist of it, going ahead through Joe Garner, who finally broke his goalscoring duct for us, early in the game. Bristol City, though, took advantage of our sloppiness in retaining possession, and they equalised not long before half time. But when Nathan Tyson restored our lead just two minutes into the second half, I must admit that I thought we'd go on to win the game.

Unfortunately, though, we were not able to hold on as City equalised from a corner with eleven minutes remaining. And as the home side were applying so much pressure by then, I feared we were going to throw it all away and leave empty-handed. And were it not for a certain Mr Lee Camp, that's exactly what would have happened as in the dying seconds of injury time, just like at Derby, the referee pointed to the penalty spot. And just like at Derby, Luke Chambers was the player responsible for the kick being awarded. But this time, there was no doubt at all that it should be a penalty as Chambers had made a rather unnecessary rash tackle. It would have been a crying shame if he had cost us the game as he had been playing well, but the Forest fans would have just remembered that one incident and lambasted him for it. He can thank his lucky stars then that Camp was once again donning his superman outfit and pulled off another terrific save to deny Michael McIndoe and prevent what would have been a very unjust defeat for Forest.

Obviously it is very disappointing that we couldn't hold on to our lead, but I am pleased with the result. We played very well again and if our shooting had been sharper we could have won quite comfortably, but we can't expect Forest to have instant success overnight. Only a very stubborn person could deny that we have improved massively in the last three or four weeks. We have gone from a team that loses every week drained of confidence and no idea what scoring a goal feels like to one that has gone four games unbeaten, including three away from home against tricky opposition. We have also scored six goals in our last four, and have been unlucky not to score more. If that is not progress, I don't know what is. I honestly expected us to be half relegated by now, so the fact that the gap has now been cut down to four points is a lot better, and with a glut of games coming up before Christmas against the so-called lesser lights of the Championship, I think we have a great chance of getting ourselves out of the bottom three before the bells usher in the start of 2009.