Well, for fifteen minutes Forest were very good indeed. The football was excellent and harked back to some of the best displays last season. When Dexter Blackstock headed us into an early lead after just nine minutes, it was a rich reward. And within a few minutes Rob Earnshaw hit the post with a shot from a tight angle. Had that gone in, such was Forest's dominance at that stage that Leeds would have felt like abandoning all hope. As it was, Forest seemed to lose confidence as Leeds began to find their way, and an unfortunate error caused by Wes Morgan when his pass was intercepted by a Leeds player led to an equaliser for the away side from Lloyd Sam who headed past Lee Camp, who until then had had hardly anything to do. Forest only really had themselves to blame for not making the most of their earlier superiority.
After a poor second half display in which Forest failed to carve out a single shot on target, I was just very relieved to come out of it with a point. We were hanging on by a thread towards the end, and I was just counting down the six minutes of injury time not even thinking about Forest possibly nicking a late winner. We were actually rather fortunate to end the game with eleven men on the pitch after Chris Gunter escaped with just a yellow card for a blatant stamp on a Leeds player's foot. That provoked a furious reaction, which led to a bit of a mêlée in the goal mouth. It could have developed into a brawl, which is not something Forest could afford to get involved in, having been punished by the FA for failing to control their players twice in the past year.
Listening to the post-match phone-in on Radio Nottingham as I walked back to our car, I had to keep reminding myself that Forest hadn't actually lost the game. Some fans sounded pretty much suicidal. It is only August, isn't it? We've only played two games, and while it is concerning what is happening behind the scenes with the lack of signings, it's not as if we need major surgery to make us competitive. We just need one or two additions – a creative midfielder and a striker probably. We are relying too much on Earnshaw and Blackstock at the moment, and there is a danger that they might get too comfortable. David McGoldrick is crocked for three months, Joe Garner has gone out on loan, Nathan Tyson keeps being used as a winger, and Dele Adebola is...well Dele Adebola. God forbid anything happens to Earnshaw or Blackstock. We're not scoring enough goals when they're in the team, let alone if one of them is missing.
The end of the transfer window is little over a fortnight away, and Nigel Doughty and Mark Arthur have hinted that they will be waiting until then before bringing in any players. That is all well and good if they do manage to bring someone in, but there is a danger that they will miss out completely. Then we will be forced to patch the side up with loaned players until January. We're only allowed a maximum of four in the squad at any one time, don't forget, and with Ryan Bertrand already at the Club, that leaves us a maximum of three players. We really do need to sign somebody permanently, but after reading Doughty's programme notes, I'm not at all confident that we will be signing anyone now. Basically he said that Forest's difficulty at being able to bring in new players this summer was down to the 'current financial climate'. Well, how does that explain how other clubs, some much smaller than us, have managed to do it? Basically the much-maligned Acquisitions Panel didn't try hard enough. Their bids for Peter Whittingham have been quite rightly labelled as 'derisory' by Cardiff. I sometimes think Forest actually don't want to get promoted the way they go so half-heartedly about their business.
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