McKenna & co can make us winners!

It feels really good to be a Forest supporter at the moment. Our summer signings, which now include Chris Gunter and Paul McKenna, have been absolutely superb. I'm really amazed that we have managed to sign all the loan players that we wanted to.

I didn't expect Tottenham to be willing to let Gunter leave permanently. The best I thought we could hope for was a season on loan. But to land him for £1.75 million on a four-year-contract is brilliant. Now at last we have a proper right back, and a very good one at that. It's just wonderful to hear him say how much he wanted to play for us, describing it as a dream move! He hasn't come from some non-League team. He's left one of the biggest clubs in the country, Tottenham, to join us!

I won't pretend that I know much about Paul McKenna, but I gather he was a very important player at Preston. In fact, he was their equivalent of Stuart Pearce. He was one of their most longest-serving players ever, and made more than 400 appearances during a 12-year spell. He was their Club captain for the past couple of seasons, and Preston's supporters are gutted to be losing him. It is quite a rarity in the modern game to have only played for one club having reached one's thirties, but it just goes to show the pulling power that Forest, with Billy Davies at the helm, now has. The chance to work under Davies just proved too strong for him. He will be 32 in October, but an older head is just what Forest needs in the centre of midfield. We have paid £750,000 for him, which Preston finally agreed to after knocking back three previous bids. I think he has been brought in specifically to be our new captain. It is about time, too, that we had a proper leader on and off the pitch.

There are very strong rumours that we have also got a deal nearly sorted out to sign Dexter Blackstock. He is expected to complete his move later this week, and all being well, will become the sixth striker in the squad. The players have obviously accepted that Davies intends to rotate the centre forwards to suit each game, because they can't all play at once! All six of them are very good players, and after Nathan Tyson scored a hat-trick in a 4-1 win at Burton Albion at the weekend in a pre-season friendly, it has given Davies even more food for thought. Competition is a marvellous thing, because it drives people on to perform their best in order to get noticed. Even our bench is going to look very strong this season, and some players you might expect to be in the first team might not even make it into the matchday squad. But it has to be like that in the Championship because every year, the division gets stronger and stronger, with the addition of more teams dropping down from the Premiership. Forest's big spending spree which was approaching £6 million at the last count is raising a few eyebrows and forcing worried bookmakers to slash their odds on us winning promotion!