Keep on going, Forest, and promotion will be yours

It would have been a rather bitter pill to swallow if we had been robbed of three points against Cardiff because of a dubious penalty, so thank heavens for Rob Earnshaw who scored against his former side to restore Forest's lead and set us on the way to a huge win over our promotion rivals, which saw us return to second place.

The Forest players were irate when the referee awarded Cardiff a penalty against Paul McKenna little over an hour into the game, and one-time Forest transfer target Peter Whittingham sent Lee Camp completely the wrong way to net his side an equaliser, which cancelled out Wes Morgan's earlier headed goal in the first half. But justice was secured only three minutes later when a great piece of link-up play saw Paul Anderson feed the advancing Earnshaw who buried the ball into the back of the net from 12 yards out to put Forest back in front.

Forest were once again indebted to Camp who made a number of important saves throughout the course of the match, and he would certainly have impressed Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington who had attended the game to observe Camp's performance after he was cleared to play for the country earlier in the week.

There was another good result at Elland Road where two of our promotion rivals Leeds and Norwich fought out a 2-2 draw. That meant that we had indeed secured second spot, and even got closer to QPR, who were held at Preston. We are only five points away from them at the moment with a game in hand, so don't rule us out winning the title just yet! On Tuesday we have what appears to be a very winnable home game against the division's bottom team Preston, who are some 11 points adrift of safety, and therefore probably have virtually given up hope of surviving, but Forest must treat this game just like the Cardiff one, and not for one moment think it will be an easy ride. Sometimes the easiest games on paper turn out to be the hardest, as last week's shock defeat at Scunthorpe proved.