Such stuff as dreams are made on

When I woke up this morning I wasn't sure if I had actually dreamt that we had thrashed Derby 5-2. I had a really poor night's sleep because after such an exciting occasion, it's very hard to come back down to earth, so as I write this, I might struggle to make sense.

Last season's encounter at the City Ground is memorable for the goal in the first minute that came courtesy of a stunning strike from Raddy Majewski. And Majewski was once again involved as his corner in the second minute was met with perfection by the head of Luke Chambers, who powered the ball into the back of the net for his second goal in successive games, and it gave Forest the perfect start to what was to turn out to be a highly entertaining match which saw a total of seven goals, five of them thankfully scored by us.

Although Derby hauled themselves level only 12 minutes later when Luke Moore cut through the Forest defence before unleashing a shot which just crossed the line after bouncing off the crossbar, Forest were in control for pretty much the whole half. At half time they looked to be well in control at 3-1 thanks to two headed goals from Marcus Tudgay, a former Rams player.

Unlike the second half of the match last season when Derby clawed their way back to 3-2 after trailing by three goals, Forest looked fairly comfortable defending their lead after the break. The fans really started to believe that the three points belonged to Forest when Robbie Earnshaw made it 4-1. But one or two alarms started ringing when Kris Commons, who was loudly booed throughout the game, immediately hit back with a free kick. And then Derby enjoyed their best spell of the game as they sought a way back into it.

Sensing danger, Billy Davies brought Kelvin Wilson on to shore up the defence, and thankfully Forest were able to weather the Derby pressure and they came through it unscathed. Earnshaw's second goal of the evening, in stoppage time, was a fitting way to end a magical misty night and a superb unbeaten year at the City Ground in 2010. This was the 30th League match that Forest had not tasted defeat in a row. The script probably said that Derby would be the team to end that record, so thank god nobody read it!

Icy reception for Palace as refreshed Reds return to action with a relish

Maybe Forest should have mini winter breaks more often, because if yesterday's completely one-sided performance against Crystal Palace was anything to go by, it does them a power of good.

It's just a pity that I missed what was probably their best performance of the season. I had snow problems of my own yesterday down here in Bedford. While Nottingham was getting away scot-free, we were inundated by the heaviest snowfall we've had in nearly twenty years. I was so worried about the possibility of being stuck on a train for hours that I simply could not take the risk. So I sat at home and listened on the internet. I felt really sad not to be there, but at the same time very relieved that I was at home in the warm and didn't have to catch a train afterwards.

The 3-0 scoreline didn't even come close to being an indicator of how much Forest dominated. It seemed like the only time a Palace player got a mention was when it was their goalkeeper Julian Speroni making a save.

By the time Forest got on the scoresheet in the 31st minute thanks to a Luke Chambers header, it was no exaggeration to say that they could have been three or four goals up. They were playing such good football that it was a surprise at half time that they only had a one-goal lead.

It's quite rare that Forest are able to keep up the tempo for a whole 90 minutes, but in the second half they were even better. Marcus Tudgay, who was making his first appearance since joining on loan from Sheffield Wednesday, made it 2-0 with a lob from thirty yards out just a minute after the restart, and substitute Gareth McCleary, who had only just joined the action, completed the rout five minutes from time to set Forest up for a Happy Christmas, and hopefully a very good 2011.

The players will no doubt have dedicated the victory to the memory of former reserve goalkeeper Dale Roberts, who tragically committed suicide earlier this week.

The Leicester said the better

Leicester fans will no doubt be gloating to the high heavens about getting one over their biggest rival (they're not ours), but for Forest it was just another poor performance against a side which was hovering just above the relegation zone.

True, Leicester under the new management of Sven-Göran-Eriksson had recently experienced a turnaround in their fortunes, but that was no excuse for Forest's insipid second half performance which failed to match their display in the first 45 minutes. Leicester deservedly walked off with the three points thanks to Andy King who scored an hour into the match. That proved to be the only goal, but Forest were thankful to Lee Camp for stopping the scoreline from being much more humiliating. In fact he, and Luke Chambers, who made two off-the-line clearances, were the only two players to emerge with any real credit. Whether it was down to the cold weather, a virus running through the squad, or big game nerves, Forest never really got going and didn't seem interested in the fact that three points would lift them into fifth place.

For Leicester the Forest game is their biggest of the season, but as the fans frequently reminded the home fans last night, 'we only hate Derby'. But still, even though Derby is of course the big one, it still hurts a little bit more losing to the Foxes, because they hate us so much and it's not nice losing to a team that hates you. At least we can say we deserved to lose, though. Defeat would have been much harder to take if we had warranted something from it.

Many people might have been wondering why new loan signings Marcus Tudgay and Aaron Ramsey were only named among the substitutes, but Billy Davies insisted that they needed more time training before being thrown in at the deep end. We got to see Ramsey make his first appearance as a late substitute, but he didn't really impress me much. I don't really see the point in bringing in players, no matter how good they are, just for one month so they can get some match fitness. What happens if we start playing a lot better with him in the team and then he goes back again? It will only dampen morale. On the other hand, if Ramsey can be persuaded to stay a bit longer, it might help us to reach the play-offs.

As for Tudgay, well time will tell if he turns out to be an adequate replacement for Dexter Blackstock, who as a result of suffering a cruciate knee ligament injury last week, is now facing at least a year on the sidelines. Tudgay has a similar goalscoring ratio of one in four games to Blackstock, but he has not been in the best of form this year with Sheffield Wednesday, only scoring twice in 15 games. Still, I'm not going to write him off before he's even pulled on a Forest shirt. We are going to have to hope he can come up with the goods, because the thought of Dele Adebola leading our forward line for the next five months is not a palatable one.

Blackstock blow might just force Doughty's hand

Forest's fantastic away win at leaders Cardiff City was somewhat overshadowed by the terrible injury to Dexter Blackstock in the last few minutes of the match. He now looks set to miss the rest of the season with cruciate knee ligament damage. That is the last thing we need right now with the squad already depleted by a series of niggling injuries to several key first teamers.

Blackstock had just a few minutes earlier been celebrating after scoring Forest's second goal, which doubled their lead given to them earlier by yet another super strike from Lewis McGugan. But Blackstock's joy quickly turned into despair when he went down under a seemingly innocuous challenge and it quickly transpired that he had sustained a serious injury to his right leg. He was stretchered off the pitch after receiving oxygen for the acute pain and with some six minutes of injury time declared, a shell-shocked Forest had some serious defending to do to make sure they did not throw away their win. Luckily, although Cardiff did come close to getting back into it, Forest saw the game out, but their celebrations were understandably muted at the end in light of what happened to Blackstock.

With so many important first team players not being available owing to injury or illness – Paul McKenna, Paul Anderson, Kelvin Wilson and Nathan Tyson all failed to make the trip – Forest's chances of winning at Cardiff were rated as rather slim. Cardiff, despite their early season off-field problems, had only lost three games all season, the same as Forest, and with just one away win since January, it was hard to be positive about Forest's chances, even without taking into account their missing players. But sometimes when you're up against it, you are prepared to go the extra mile, and maybe that's what helped Forest to overturn the odds. At half time they were extremely good value for their lead which McGugan gave to them with another thunderbolt, from 22 yards out. Cardiff fans must have at that point groaned 'not again' as they will have remembered a similarly good McGugan goal scored against them little over a year ago in injury time as Forest robbed them of three points in their quest for promotion.

Cardiff could have no complaints about losing their place at the top of the Championship as they were made to look very ordinary, and for once the Forest defence did most of the hard work on their own and didn't have to rely on Lee Camp to bail them out so much. The win takes Forest into sixth position in the table, and might just trigger a good run of form that will even enable a challenge for automatic promotion. But that task would be made a lot easier if only Nigel Doughty would be prepared to sanction some loan signings to prop us up until January. The injury to Blackstock surely now means his hand must be forced.

How on earth would we cope without Lee Camp?

I suppose with Forest's unbeaten home record of 27 games stretching over more than a year and QPR still being undefeated in the Championship, a draw was very much on the cards.

As nil-nil draws go, though, it could never be described as boring, at least not in the second half anyway where Lee Camp as ever was in top form to keep Forest in the game. Forest didn't actually produce a shot on target until well into the second half when lone striker Dexter Blackstock tried his luck against his former side from long range. And even though Billy Davies made a double substitution not long after bringing on both Rob Earnshaw and Dele Adebola so Forest could play with two up front, the Reds still struggled to create good chances, except for a powerful shot from Lewis McGugan which produced an equally good save from the QPR goalkeeper.

All in all, a draw was a fair result, but Forest are racking up a huge amount of debt to Camp, who match after match, turns in one fantastic performance after another. He must be Forest's most valuable asset because while the players who score the goals grab the instant headlines, it's Camp's heroics in goal which more often than not, it seems these days, are making many of the results possible. Where would we be without him?

Taking everything into account, we're not doing too badly

Despite all the uncertainty concerning Billy Davies' future at Forest, on the field things are not going too badly considering. Last night's hard-fought win against in-form Coventry was our third straight home win, and it took us to within just one point of the play-off places.

I was rather unimpressed with Davies' starting line-up which saw goal machine Lewis McGugan and Nathan Tyson deployed on the left and right wings respectively, and questioned his decision to play Rob Earnshaw in a loan striker's role, but it seemed to work rather well, perhaps because Coventry already had a game plan in mind and they were really confused by Davies' tactics. The Sky Blues, who were in fifth place before the game, did go in front, however, completely against the run of play half an hour or so into the game when one-time Red Sammy Clingan's in-swinging free-kick met the unfortunate head of Luke Chambers who put into his own net.

Happily for Chambers, parity was restored only six minutes later when Radoslaw Majewski assumed McGugan's role for scoring fantastic goals when he struck a ferocious shot from 25 yards out. Majewski hasn't really made much of an impact this season at all, so it was great to see him start to pay off the fee we paid for his permanent signing in the summer.

Coventry demonstrated why they were placed in such a lofty position in the table as they made the Forest defence, and Lee Camp work very hard for their money, before the Reds took the lead just after an hour had passed thanks to a free-kick from Chris Cohen which went straight into the net from a tight angle.

Camp pulled off a terrific last-ditch save from another Forest player Marlon King, who had been roundly booed throughout the evening, in the first minute of six minutes injury time as Forest fought desperately to cling on to the three points. Thankfully they did just that, and the win was good news amid all the press talk of Davies falling out with the Club's hierarchy.

Forest must stop reading from this tired old script

Where would Forest be right now if it wasn't for Lewis McGugan? I shudder to think. It's sad to say, but I think he is carrying the team at the moment. Apart from Lee Camp, he's the only player who has really shone this season, and that's worrying.

I don't think the bookmakers would have offered particularly generous odds on Forest drawing and McGugan scoring the goal at Watford. Although the point was a good one taken out of context, given that Watford are pushing for a play-off place, it is getting a little bit boring now, don't you think? I have the match report half-written in my head long before kick off when Forest play away these days, so I'm sure the home opposition don't have to do too much homework when it comes to assessing Forest's threat. Basically the script goes like this. Forest will outplay the home team for long periods, have a few half-decent chances to score, then against the run of play, they concede a goal owing to a defensive lapse in concentration. If they're lucky, they (or rather McGugan) will manage to score occasionally, and this will give the fans (false) hope that a victory is on the cards. But after a lot of huffing and puffing and genuinely getting nowhere the game peters out into nothing. That has been the blueprint for a Forest away performance this season.

It makes winning our home games vitally important if we want to avoid slipping into the relegation places. But the next two teams visiting the City Ground just so happen to be fifth-placed Coventry and first-placed QPR. Oh dear. If we start losing at home, I fear for us, because it will put huge pressure on us every home game to make sure we win them. In front of 20,000+ impatient Forest fans that will be a difficult task.