Sunday 13 September 2009

Travel-slick Reds not too far away from becoming a force

Another away game, another point. What is it they say? Win your home games and draw away, and you won't go too far wrong. And when you go to big teams like Sheffield Wednesday, who have had a very good start to the season, and come away with something, you have got to be happy.

For the second game running, Forest took the lead in the very early stages of the game when just two minutes in, a terrific cross from the re-called Paul Anderson found Dexter Blackstock's head, and the ball looped over the goalkeeper into the back of the net. It was a pretty soft goal to concede from Wednesday's point of view, but Forest didn't care about that.

Whenever Anderson got hold of the ball, Wednesday didn't know how to live with him. His pace was absolutely frightening, and he put in so many good balls into the box. But it was such a shame that apart from the goal, our strikers just couldn't get on the end of them. If they had, I think we would have won the match. It was good to see Anderson get a full 90 minutes behind him, as he hadn't played at all away from home until Saturday, which really puzzled me. Billy Davies was picking Joe Garner ahead of him on the right wing, but we all knew that Anderson's pace could be a real handful for opposition defences just like it was last season away from home, and this was certainly the case at Hillsborough. I don't even know if Davies had originally planned to play him anyway, as Radoslaw Majewski (injured) and Nathan Tyson, whose wife had given birth overnight, were both missing. But Anderson's performance will now make it very hard for Davies to leave him out of the side against Ipswich on Tuesday night.

Forest couldn't have too many complaints when Wednesday equalised six minutes before half time through Marcus Tudgay, as they had been applying lots of pressure. Once again, there was a hint of deflection in the goal, and once again Wes Morgan seemed to be the culprit. Not for nothing has he been a mainstay in central defence for the past six years, and he is a favourite with the Forest supporters, but he does make quite a few glaring errors, which a more competent centre half wouldn't make. He was a good defender at League One level, but I don't think he'll ever become a top class Championship centre back. He's just too clumsy when he gets hold of the ball. Davies claims that he is impressed with him and Luke Chambers as a partnership, but the fact is we are looking to strengthen our defence – we tried to sign a centre half in the summer - so Morgan and Chambers know that their days could be numbered.

We've made quite a slow start to the season, but it hasn't been dreadful. Quite a few teams have only won one game in the Championship so far, so it's nothing to worry about. We're definitely getting stronger and stronger. You can see that in the performances. I think the Ipswich game looks very winnable. Roy Keane is under a lot of pressure as they have lost four of their six opening games and have yet to win. They were tipped by many to be one of the favourites for promotion, but have struggled so far. I think Davies will be targeting this game as our potential first away victory of the season. It's a difficult place to go and win, though, and our record against them recently has not been too good. Who can forget that six-goal thrashing four years ago? I wish I could! But there was also that amazing topsy-turvy seven-goal thriller, which we edged 4-3 after coming back from two down in 2003 in that wonderful season under Paul Hart. I think that there's every chance of there being a similar scoreline this time around with our abundance of attackers and our dodgy defence!

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