So last night was fairly lacklustre. And many a fan thought we’d easily win after our previous exploits against Wolves, and being on the 4 match run of form we were on. This forgets of course the famous reasoning many use for the unpredictability of the Championship that it’s a very even division. Anyone can beat anyone.
So last night when you see no end of people pre match presuming and assuming we would beat Ipswich because of League Position illustrated the extremes of emotions of Forest fans. These same fans who assumed the 3 points were in the bag were the same ones who also cried foul and have decided this means the squad is inept, Camp incapable and that we might as well pack up any hopes of promotion.
I even saw one guy suggesting that anyone saying large squads take time to gel is an idiot. Bear in mind we haven’t had a settled defence this year, and the one thing you hear time and time again about defences is that they need understanding, telepathy of where each other is. And most of all to be settled. All great defences are. Ours isn’t settled. So with new personnel in each time takes adjustment, and adjustment brings errors. Think of the last 80’s early 90’s defences, or the defence that took us to third in the premier league. Settled. Organised. Consistent. Laws; Walker; Wilson; Pearce. Lyttle; Cooper; Chettle; Pearce. Settled defences that played week in week out with each other. We currently haven’t had a defence that has that.
The same guy also suggested professional footballers should be able after a while to seamlessly fit into any role and the team carry on regardless. This isn’t how life works in work. Think of your job, you might settled with one expertise, if your thrown out of your comfort zone it makes you question decisions, maybe pause, maybe be too cautious. Maybe make a mistake. This is what happened. This is what surprisingly hasn’t happened much yet.
I would say yes we have spent money, but considering where we expect to be we are ahead of schedule. No teams which are any good gel immediately. Hence why it took Man City several years to win the League. United, Arsenal, Chelsea, there is a core of players who have played together for a while, with new people bought in piecemeal. Not wholesale.
This isn’t harking back to the old 5 year plan under Hart, but remember the al-Hasawi’s said they have a scope of two years to be promoted. They recognise this can’t be done over night, and if you look at the way Cardiff has toiled for years being just off the mark in terms of promotion it does suggest that as well as being good enough what you need mostly is a huge element of luck.
We haven’t spent as much as on our team as Blackburn spent on one player in Jordan Rhodes so to compare the spending is churlish. We were close to relegation last year and lost half that squad and most of what was good. So this year was always for building. Too many fans have had impatience and when things are going well they are quiet. The moment we lose to anyone or underperform they start with the moaning.
Going back to the core reason for this article, losing to Ipswich is not the embarrassing defeat some make it out to be. They have some good players. They also now have a very good manager. They are struggling because they had in my opinion a very poor manager. Jewel is not a good boss and the fact he stuck around so long surprised me, but then Ipswich are a very patient club.
I also laugh at how after one defeat people immediately try and point out how they were right and how certain players have to be playing. It’s a constant cycle with our midfielders, when McGugan isn’t playing some say he should be, when he’s in the team and underperforming immediately some want him dropped and someone else restoring. No one is ever happy.
Had the last two results been reversed maybe this post would never happened. The good feeling following beating Wolves has bought an extreme of emotion. One you always seem to get with Forest. The masses are never content; they are either euphoric or depressed. It’s completely bi-polar in its nature. We are on the edge of the playoffs. We are in within a good run of results from the higher echelons of the table. As I said quite recently, plenty of reasons to be cheerful.
So let’s not get depressed that we lost to a struggling team. Let’s not over analyse it. Players played badly, It happens. The overall curve of our season’s fortunes is an upward curve. We aren’t going backwards as a club. But a section of support behaves like each defeat we might have is a return to last season’s struggles.
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