At last the play-off final places have been sorted out, and Forest will be meeting Blackpool in the semi-finals with the first leg to be played next Saturday lunchtime. Bring them on!
As I've been saying throughout the season, I am not bothered if we go up or not. I personally feel right at home in the Championship and will feel sad to leave it, and if we do go up, I am not sure I will feel as high as a kite like I did two years ago when we got out of League One on the final day. I really want to feel ecstatic, and maybe I will be swept up in the euphoria on the day, but at the moment I just feel cold when I think of the Premiership. I will be very sad to see this wonderful squad of ours broken up after only a season. Only two or three of them are capable of making it in the top flight, so we would need major surgery just to make us competitive. We will be everybody's favourites to come straight back down, and we could end up being as bad as Derby were, or worse...perish the thought. It might be exciting at first, but after a while when we've gone something like 15 games without a win, it will be a chore going to games with the feeling that we are half-beaten before we've even kicked a ball. Do you really want ten months of that? I know I don't.
Blackpool are the only team who have beaten us both home and away this season so they may feel that gives them a psychological advantage, while Forest will be seeing it as a revenge mission. Forest only visited Blackpool two weeks ago, where we lost lost 3-1. Many of our first team players were rested that day, mind you, so it's difficult to gauge anything from it. But with Forest having not won away in ten games, Blackpool will have every right to feel confident in the first leg. They will be desperate to get at least a two-goal cushion because they would then come up against Forest's formidable home record of 18 wins in 20 games. Incidentally the last time Forest were beaten in the League at the City Ground was against...yes, you guessed it, Blackpool. We suffered a 1-0 defeat against them back in September, but it was a game we didn't deserve to lose, even if our team line-up that day was a little bit suspect. I remember being angry with Davies for playing the diminutive Robbie Earnshaw up on his own that day. No wonder we did everything but score!
I'm so glad that we finished third in the table, because we have had a great season and deserve to be rewarded for it as much as possible. It was a shame that we couldn't hold on to our 2-0 lead at Scunthorpe. We looked completely in control at half time after goals from Joe Garner and George Boyd (remember him?), but Scunny got themselves back into it early in the second half, and a ghastly mistake by substitute Gareth McCleary three minutes from the end gifted the home side an equaliser and denied Forest victory on the last day of the season. Not that the result really mattered as Forest still finished third as Cardiff, needing a win to overhaul us, lost at Derby. The really interesting games were elsewhere at Swansea and Blackpool, where victory for either could have seen them earn the final play-off place, but Blackpool were the ones who qualified even though they only managed to draw against Bristol City as Swansea failed to beat Doncaster. I'm just relieved we have managed to avoid Leicester. If we are to lose the play-off semi-finals, then I would have hated it to have been against them. We'd already endured a heavy thrashing at the Walkers' Stadium a couple of months ago, and the thought of them doing the same in the first leg filled me with dread. It would have been humiliating against a team that regards us as their biggest rivals. But if we meet them at Wembley, I think it would be a tight game. A Forest-Leicester final would be the dream scenario from a media point of view. I have had a gut feeling we would be meeting Leicester again this season for a long time, so I really believe it is going to happen! I may not necessarily want to get promoted, but I really do want to visit Wembley with Forest. I was only ten and just a teletext fan when Forest treated it like their second home, and it would make up for us missing out so cruelly three years ago.
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