Yes, we are playing pretty badly at the moment, losing our last three away games, but did you really expect us to be fantastic all season? Sooner or later we were bound to hit a stumbling block, but if the fans start getting on the manager and players' backs so quickly we will have less of a chance of getting out of the rut and start things going again.
Admittedly Billy's team selection for the trip to Doncaster was rather odd. Why on earth was Paul Anderson left out of the squad altogether? He hasn't been playing well recently, but it's not as if we had somebody better to replace him. In fact Nathan Tyson was awful, and if rumours are to believed, Anderson was not happy at being dropped.
The decision to play Dele Adebola up front on his own and leave Dexter Blackstock and Rob Earnshaw on the bench was another bone of contention with the Forest fans. Why be so negative against a good passing side like Doncaster? If we had played 4-4-2 like we do at home, we might have had a good chance of winning. It's as if Davies doesn't want us to get promoted. I always thought he was bluffing when he said that we were not ready to go up. Now I'm beginning to think he actually means it. Some people are saying on the forums that Davies deliberately fielded a weakened side to make a point to the board about squad depth. He keeps saying that certain players need resting to keep them fresh, but the fact is we need them out there for every game. I don't see why not they can't handle two games in a week. I don't think the players are all that happy about being 'rested'. They need to be playing regularly so they can discover their form. Earnshaw suffered badly from being constantly dropped, but once he got a run in the team he was back to his best. He couldn't even get on as a substitute yesterday. He and Blackstock might have made all the difference at Doncaster, but both were left out of the starting line-up. Adebola can be a good option to throw on in the last few minutes to see out a game, but playing him up front on his own is playing into the opposition's hands. Doncaster must have been delighted when they saw our line-up with players like Earnshaw, Blackstock and Anderson all missing. After the poor performance at Coventry on Tuesday, you couldn't blame Davies for wanting to change things around a bit, but the team he picked harked back to the bad old days under Colin Calderwood: i.e clueless. The midfield players were mostly dire. Tyson had an awful game, and yet he was the third player to be substituted, and Lewis McGugan failed to make the most of a rare chance to impress alongside Paul McKenna, whose performances just lately have really deteriorated. The only player to emerge with any real credit was Chris Cohen. But it was not much good him playing well when everyone else was rubbish.
It was not much of a surprise when Billy Sharp put Doncaster in the lead half an hour into the game. And the way Forest were playing you couldn't see a way back even at that early stage. It just didn't seem to be their day, and the state of the pitch certainly didn't help matters. When crowd favourite Radoslaw Majewski was later replaced by David McGoldrick, some of the Forest fans voiced their disapproval, which didn't go down too well with Davies, who after the match said that he felt he had been 'disrespected'. You want to watch it, Forest fans. Davies is not a man to be messed with. Once things start going badly, he can become very arrogant. We have one of the finest managers outside the top flight, and it would be an awful shame if he was to become unpopular with the fans over a few petty issues.
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