Yes, it hurts, but staying up is more important than the Cup

To be honest it feels quite a relief to be out of the FA Cup, as it now enables us to concentrate on the much more important business of trying to stay up. But the manner in which Forest threw away a 2-0 lead to end up losing to a deflected long-range effort from Kris 'Judas' Commons was very hard to take. I just hope that it won't have too much of an effect on our confidence and that we can bounce back quickly. But if we are to survive in the Championship this season, Billy Davies must sort the defence out and sign some players on loan.

We were 2-0 up within the first 15 minutes thanks to a Chris Cohen piledriver in only the second minute and then a Nathan Tyson penalty. We were buzzing and there was a superb atmosphere, but for some reason, instead of looking for a third goal, we just sat back and soaked up the pressure. But our defence just wasn't up to the task as Derby came at us in numbers, with Judas in particular causing us all sorts of problems. The crowd, not surprisingly, booed his every move, but this just made him all the more determined, and we saw quite a lot of his trademark long-range efforts, which mostly were going harmlessly over the crossbar, something we had to put up with a lot when he was at Forest.

Derby quite frankly deserved to haul themselves level with two headed goals, which should have been dealt with a lot better by our sloppy defence, and when Judas rather inevitably fired in what turned out to be the winner, nearly 15 minutes from time, Forest had by then run out of steam and were just going through the motions.

Shortly before the goal, James Perch joined our ever-growing injury list when he was stretchered off and taken to hospital – just as Paul Anderson had been in the game at Pride Park. Though fortunately for Perch x-rays proved he had not broken anything and was discharged later on, although the question of whether he will be sidelined for a few games remains to be answered.

Losing to Derby is never a very pleasant experience, especially at home where we had not lost to them in 38 years. But I was more concerned with the way we defended and just let Derby run at us over and over again. I don't know how our back four players can call themselves defenders, I really don't. All of them are capable of playing well individually, but this season we have rarely ever seen them play well as a unit. When Lee Camp was behind them, I don't think it's a coincidence that they looked a lot more confident, but now Paul Smith is back, they are looking like a nervous wreck again. I think Davies has got to make the signing of another goalkeeper one of his first priorities when the loan window opens next week as the goalkeeper is the most important player in your team, no matter how good the attack is. If your defence is leaking goals, your strikers are going to have to score three or four every game, which is not going to happen, especially not if you're struggling at the bottom.

I'm not too bothered that we have missed out on the chance to play Man United. I'd rather wait a few years and meet them in the Premiership. For now all I can think about is where our next win is going to come from. I'm rather hesitant to say that a victory over QPR is vital because it is going to be an incredibly difficult game because Rangers are flying, and we've gone rather flat recently, so I'm afraid there's a distinct possibility we could be back in the relegation zone come Saturday evening as many teams below us have winnable looking games. With a bit of luck, though, the game will be cancelled owing to the heavy snowfall in the Midlands and we will have the weekend off, giving our players a much-needed rest.