What can shake Forest out of this stupor?

I'm so glad we haven't got a relegation battle to worry about, because Forest are in terrible form right now and look like a team devoid of direction.

Even though the 3-2 scoreline might suggest otherwise, Swansea really outplayed Forest yesterday and totally deserved the three points, which keeps them in the hunt for automatic promotion, and all but rules Forest out. Seven points separate us from second-placed Norwich now, and even though with eight games remaining that deficit is not impossible to make up, such is the state that Forest find themselves in at the moment, they are not likely to snap themselves out of this malaise and notch up a significant number of wins to claim promotion. We really have to concentrate on keeping our play-off place, because it is looking increasingly likely that we won't even achieve that. We can only hope that Billy Davies is right that the international break will do us good and that we will return a team full of confidence and energy.

Maybe the long-awaited return of Guy Moussi will make all the difference in the world, but I'm not building my hopes up too much. He will need a couple of games to return to match fitness for a start, and after reading that he has rejected a contract, it's bound to be unsettling not just for him, but for his team mates. So if anybody thinks he's the midfield messiah who will magically put everything right again could well be disappointed.

We'll be lucky to reach the play-offs at this rate

I had a feeling that we might lose against Doncaster, so in that respect I suppose I should be happy that we got a point. But really, it was a must-win game for us ahead of two very awkward away trips to Swansea and Leeds, and it's difficult to see where we go from here now.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the football we were playing in the first half, as I really expected us to be quite poor, but once again our final ball was really letting us down with Rob Earnshaw and Marcus Tudgay looking out of sorts. Earnshaw limped out of the action at half time and was replaced by Nathan Tyson, but this failed to have an impact on Forest's ability to find the net.

Doncaster were not really in it in the first half, but after the break they gave Forest a few scares, but fortunately like Forest, their finishing was poor. Even though there was plenty of goalmouth action, the 0-0 scoreline basically summed up the match rather nicely.

I don't know whether it's a problem with the side's confidence and team spirit, or our missing key players, but Forest can't seem to be able to beat anyone at the moment. After all if they couldn't beat Preston on their own ground, then why should they win against anybody? Now we have only won one match in nine games, which as Radio Nottingham pointed out yesterday, is as bad as it has got under Billy Davies.

Even though Swansea themselves have suffered a bad run of form lately, I am very apprehensive about Forest playing them next week. Then a fortnight later after the international break, we visit Leeds, who are now above us in the table. We'll be lucky to get one point from either of those games, and yet if we really want automatic promotion, we need to win at least one of them.

We really missed a good chance to establish a bit of a gap between ourselves and 7th place yesterday as Burnley suffered a shock 3-0 home defeat against Millwall. But it's not just Burnley we have to worry about now, as Leicester and Hull are also closing in on us. Even though I don't think we will win the play-offs, I think it would be better for our morale to reach them and then lose them than miss out altogether. To have been knocking on the door for automatic promotion all season and then not even make the top six at the end would be a lot more psychologically damaging.

Boyd signing is pointless: he won't make a scrap of difference

How could Forest have gone from being a team full of confidence and energy vying for automatic promotion, and then suddenly looking more like relegation candidates in such a short space of time?

Forest's habit of playing badly against teams at the bottom of the table is becoming a very unfunny joke. I suppose we shouldn't really be too surprised that Sheffield United, a team that had not won in 15 matches before yesterday evening's encounter, would beat Forest. After all we have a very good track record of being on the receiving end of a team suddenly recovering from a bout of bad form. It is sickening to think of how many points we have squandered against sides at the bottom of the table recently. And yet we are still not that far away from second place. Had we made the most of the fixtures against the sides fighting the drop, we would be sitting comfortably in second place, but for one reason or another the team's confidence is completely shot, and I am just not sure how on earth we are going to get it back for the remaining ten games.

The defeat at Bramall Lane has seen us slip down into sixth place, just three points head of Burnley who happen to have two games in hand. Oh dear. Just a few weeks ago we looked to be reassured of a play-off place at the very least, but it's all fallen apart at the seams now, and if we carry on like this we won't qualify for them at all. Mind you, maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing considering how well we do in them.

Until the last fifteen minutes of the match, it looked as though Forest might emerge with a morale-boosting win despite not playing all that well. Dele Adebola gave Forest the lead just before half time, and when Lee Camp saved Daniel Bogdanovic's penalty in the second half Lady Luck seemed to be favouring Forest. But it all went wrong inside six minutes when Sam Vokes equalised and with just ten minutes left, Sam Lowton headed the Blades in front and quite frankly it was all Forest deserved for a sloppy second half performance.

I am not too hopeful that our new loan signing Kris Boyd from Middlesbrough will make much of a difference. He certainly didn't last night when he came on as a substitute. I think it's pretty obvious that we need a central midfielder, not another striker. If players like Marcus Tudgay and Rob Earnshaw are struggling to score goals, then so too will Boyd. I think it's a pretty pointless signing and just proves just how out of touch the blasted Acquisitions Panel really is.

Forest don't need world beaters, just bodies

Losing a home game is always a very unpleasant feeling, but when it's happened for the first time in 18 months, it leaves you feeling a bit shell-shocked.

All I've heard since yesterday's match is: 'Well, it had to happen sometime.' Er, no it didn't, especially not against Hull City of all teams. Forest could have gone on and maintained their unbeaten record at home for the rest of the season quite easily. But they've lost their way a lot recently, and they've gone from winning six in a row to winning just one in seven. I'm beginning to think that there may be some truth in the belief that the Manager of the Month Award is a curse.

In terms of the League Table, the defeat didn't cause us much harm at all as there were poor results for the other sides with Norwich being held at home to Preston, Swansea losing at Scunthorpe, and Cardiff slipping up at home with a defeat against Ipswich. But, to be honest, even though we still remain just three points away from second place, does anyone seriously think we are going up automatically now, given the state we are in at the moment? The players look exhausted and they are picking up niggling injuries because of this. Sadly I don't think this is a bad patch that we're going through, but more likely a permanent decline as the season winds down to its inevitable conclusion: That is we will still be a Championship side next season.

It's a bit telling that this week Billy Davies said in an interview that if promotion is not delivered this season, then we'll go for it next time. It sounds like an admission that the squad is not good enough, and that Nigel Doughty has told him that he is not willing to back him. We've been fobbed off with the excuse that we can't make loan signings because all the good players are not available at such a crucial time of the season. So how come the other teams are bringing in people? Even if the players are not world beaters, having a few new faces in the dressing room does give the other players a big boost, but the short-sighted Mark Arthur believes that we shouldn't be bringing in players who are not better than what we've already got. Keep on believing that, Arthur, and things will never change.

Is this season turning into a repeat of the last?

The relief of Dele Adebola's injury-time equaliser at Middlesbrough last night must not be allowed to cloud over the fact that Forest were really poor and did not deserve a point.

Rather worryingly Forest's automatic promotion charge seems to have hit the buffers lately. Their failure to beat Scunthorpe, Preston, or Middlesbrough has seem them miss out on some crucial points, and now they are currently enduring an injury crisis, which seems to get worse as every match passes. The Forest fans are getting a sense of Déjà vu as the same thing happened last year, where Forest seemed unstoppable, and people were convinced they were going up, but when it came to the last few months of the season they just seemed to run out of battery. The lack of signings in the transfer window were to blame for last season's failed promotion bid, and our inability to bring in a left back following Nicky Shorey's departure. This time if we fail again, Nigel Doughty's reluctance to put his hand in his pocket last summer will come back to haunt him. The Forest fans will not be in forgiving mood if the Club again throws away a glorious opportunity to return to the Premiership, having repeated the mistakes of last season.