No fewer than six of the players who started the game against Derby last week were missing, with injury, illness and suspension giving Colin Calderwood no choice but to make a lot of changes. For a game against one of the Championship's most potent strikeforces, the last thing Forest needed was for their defence to be weakened, but with both Joel Lynch and Julian Bennett being unavailable, it meant that Joe Heath would be handed a rare start at left back, and a recall for Luke Chambers at right back, so James Perch could switch to midfield and fill in for the injured Carl Fletcher. I was quite surprised that Ian Breckin was dropped to the bench after a couple of good performances away from home. I felt that he deserved to keep his place, especially as Kelvin Wilson and Wes Morgan had been less than solid together so far this season.
When we went behind quite early, I thought that we were going to be in for a long afternoon. Birmingham were torturing our makeshift defence and there was a sense of inevitability when they finally made the breakthrough. But to Forest's credit, they did not let their heads drop, as might have been the case earlier on in the season when going behind. There seemed to be a new air of confidence about them following a couple of good away results at Crystal Palace and Derby. The defence gradually began to get its act together as the first half wore on, and by half time, Forest could consider themselves hard done by not to be at least level, considering how much possession they had.
Forest were excellent in everything but their finishing in the second half, and made Birmingham look like an average midtable side, rather than one which had won nine of their fifteen games so far this season. Our hard work and endeavour was finally rewarded seven minutes after the restart when James Perch headed the ball home following a free kick from Chris Cohen. And from then on Forest dominated the rest of the match with Nathan Tyson causing the Brum defence all sorts of trouble. He had numerous good opportunities to score but much to the Forest fans' frustration, he was thwarted every time.
Having been convinced that we were going to be thrashed, I cheered when the referee blew his whistle. I would definitely have taken a point before the game, but I can't help but think what might have been if we had better finishers at the Club. Joe Garner for me has been disappointing so far, and Tyson's final ball seems to have deserted him, scoring once all season. Worryingly Rob Earnshaw, who sat out the game with a calf injury, is very injury prone, and this means that he'll constantly be playing catch-up just to get his match fitness back. That is not good for Forest at all. The fact that our top scorer in the League is Mr Own Goal tells you all you need to know.
There is no doubt that we are improving a lot. I did say that we'd be lucky to get one point from the last three games, so the fact that we have got five is really impressive, but we do need to start picking up wins quickly, because the other teams above us are starting to pull away now. We're still five points adrift, and our goal difference is not getting any better as we are just not scoring enough. Fortunately there are quite a few poor teams around us, and we will be playing many of them in the next few weeks. If we can pick up a lot of points between now and Christmas I think we'll be alright. The determination and team spirit is definitely there, so at least we've got two of those qualities needed in a relegation battle. They were missing the last time we went down, so I am a bit more hopeful that we will get ourselves out of trouble, but that won't happen if our strikers don't start scoring goals soon.
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