You've had your chance, Forest, and you've blown it

Oh no, Forest. I thought we'd got over this. I really thought we'd turned the proverbial corner, but the home defeat against ten man Norwich is a real hammer blow, and I am not convinced we will recover from it now.

It really was a bad day for us results wise. Southampton pulled off an unlikely win at Reading, and third-from-bottom Watford, with a new management team in place, earned a convincing win at home to QPR. Not only that, but Doncaster drew at Burnley, which meant we swapped places with them at the bottom of the table. So taking all this into account, the game against Norwich, who were five points head of us at the start of play, was even more crucial than it was before. I really believed that we were going to win the game and at worst feared we may only draw it, so the fact that we lost to a side that had struggled really badly away from home despite them being reduced to ten men after only twenty minutes, is really hard to take. Victory would have put us on level pegging with Charlton and dragged Norwich right into it, but instead we remain bottom and are now six points adrift again.

You would think that after Norwich had a man sent off, Forest would really seize control of the game, but instead they found themselves trailing just three minutes after Gary Doherty was giving his marching orders for a professional foul on Nathan Tyson. Forest had defended very poorly straight from the kick off and were struggling to cope with Norwich's pace up front. Kelvin Wilson seemed to be largely at fault for the goal as he failed to clear the ball properly, enabling Martin Patterson to score.

The defence had done really well during the unbeaten run, but it really looked very shaky yesterday evening. Wilson was especially poor, and looks like his confidence has taken a huge knock. Ever since he was handed the captaincy, he has not performed nearly as well. I just don't think he is a leader, but then again who is? We don't have any at all, and when you're in a crisis, you really need a good captain. I just can't think of anyone who would be suitable for the job. I never rated Ian Breckin as a captain before, but I do think he should come back into the side for Wilson at the moment, because at least he's got experience and maturity.

I thought we looked quite good going forward in the first half and we did create a few good chances to score with Joe Garner forcing a good save out of the Norwich goalkeeper, but the final ball was again found wanting, and there was a touch of fortune about Paul Anderson's equaliser five minutes before half time. He did well to turn with the ball, but the shot itself should have been saved. But still, it was good to see Anderson actually get on the scoresheet. He has been quite frustrating so far showing odd flashes of brilliance, but also giving the ball away far too much. At the moment I don't think he's anything special, but then he is playing for Colin Calderwood, and how many good players have been made to look rubbish under his management?

Once we had got the equaliser, I thought we'd go on to win, but in the second half we were dreadful. Gareth McCleary had come on at half time for Matt Thornhill, which should have made us more of an attacking threat, but if anything we just got worse. McCleary looked like he had got stage fright performing in front of the cameras and kept losing possession. Forest just began to lose their way, and in the 73rd minute only had themselves to blame when they defended poorly again when Luke Chambers haplessly put through his own net when trying to clear the ball. Perhaps his luck had run out, having seen Lee Camp save an injury time penalty awarded against him at Bristol City last week.

But although it was Chambers who scored the own goal that lost us the game, I think most of the blame should be directed firmly at Calderwood. Straight after Norwich had gone back in front, he took off left back Joe Heath, and asked our main source of creativity in midfield Chris Cohen to go and play in defence. And even worse he replaced Cohen with Garner! So we were left with just Tyson up on his own up front despite us being 2-1 behind and needing to win the game! If that's not proof that Calderwood doesn't know what he's doing, I don't know what is. When you're losing a game at home that you simply must win and playing against ten men, playing one up front is just ridiculous. The commentators on the TV said we were a 'one-trick pony' and were just trying to lump mainly useless long-balls up to Tyson all the time. When you have your manager deploying stupid tactics like these, it's no wonder we are where we are in the table.

I was dreading the Doncaster game, but I am not now. In a strange way I feel quite relaxed about it. I have made up my mind that we are going down now no matter what happens on Tuesday night. We're coming up to the midway point in the season and we have just 12 points so far out of a possible 54. That means we've only managed to earn 22% of the points available to us so far. In order to reach the 50-point barrier, which would probably be enough for us to survive, we'd need 38 points from the remaining 84, and that means we need to more than double our percentage return for the rest of the season. Even the most optimistic person in the world would have to conceive that that would be a really tall order.