As long as we are fighting for survival to avoid the disaster of dropping back into League One, the FA Cup very much takes a back seat. If I'm being absolutely honest, I stopped caring about this competition years ago. Since Cloughie's departure, we've only ever made it as far as the quarter-finals once, and even the prospect of lifting the trophy doesn't seem quite as exciting as it used to be.
That is not to say that we shouldn't bask in the glory of putting Mark Hughes' multi-million pound team to the sword and enjoy all the headlines that come with it. It's really weird seeing Forest top of the football headlines agenda and reminds me of the times when we could genuinely say we were a bit good.
Though we shouldn't take anything away from a brilliant Forest display, we can't ignore the fact that Man City were awful to put it mildly. Despite officially being the world's richest club with £100 million being available to spend in the transfer window alone, their defending was dreadful for both Rob Earnshaw and Joe Garner's goals. Their fullback somehow managed to lose possession, which enabled Matt Thornhill to nip in and square it to Earnshaw, and Garner couldn't believe his luck when a City player took a throw-in and threw the ball straight into his path, before he struck the third Forest goal and secured our passage into round four.
But it wasn't just down to City's defence being poor. The whole Forest team was excellent, and after dominating most of the first half, they richly deserved to go in front when Nathan Tyson scored what will be a contender for one of the goals of the FA Cup with a stunning volley from quite a distance out. And just a few minutes later Earnshaw made it 2-0 just before half time, and having been unfortunate to sit through a pathetic display by their side, it was of no surprise to the Man City fans, who roundly booed their players off.
I was expecting a City comeback in the second half, as I didn't think our shoddy defence would cope with wave and wave of attacks, but I was forgetting one thing: this was not Colin Calderwood's team. It was John Pemberton's. The defence made up of Luke Chambers, Wes Morgan, Ian Breckin, and makeshift left back Chris Cohen, coped admirably, and the recalled Paul Smith, who was playing his first game in more than two months, made some top-drawer saves to keep City at bay. Once it became apparent that they were not going to get past us, City seemed to just give up and were happy to peter out. The third goal fifteen minutes from time killed the tie once and for all and gave Forest's long-suffering travelling fans something to cheer about at last. Many of them will be too young to remember Forest achieving a result as noteworthy as this as it was a decade since we were last in the Premiership when we were mixing it with the big boys, while the older fans will of course be reminded of the glorious away days during the Cloughie era when Forest were playing top teams off the park away from home on a frequent basis.
The victory over City will be remembered for a long time to come, but not if we don't get ourselves out of trouble and are relegated. We must not lose sight of the fact that we are only outside of the bottom three on goal difference, and every single game between now and the rest of the season is going to be huge. We have a very good chance of surviving as we are playing well and seemed to have developed a winning mentality lately with three wins in our last four games. That awful Doncaster 'performance' on Boxing Day was hopefully just an anomaly, and perhaps we will now start to play as well at home as we do away.
Let's hope that Billy Davies encourages them to keep playing football, as it has been yielding a lot of goals lately. His first priority, though, will be to shore up our leaky defence, and that may well come at an expense of our attack. We may start playing more direct, which is not popular with the Forest fans, who have been weaned on flowing attacking football. But if it's only for the short-term purpose of trying to stay in the Championship, I will gladly accept any style of football – just as long as we win enough games!
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