Sheff Wed 1:0 Forest

My second away trip of the season (I'll be getting a nose bleed soon) and yet another away defeat.

It seems to me that the problem CC faces week in week out, and let’s face it, every manager up and down the country in every league, is how to get the balance right between defence and attack.

Taking this game as a good example, the formation at the start was designed to stop Sheff Wed from scoring, and on the whole, they did quite well, limiting them to only one decent chance in the whole first half. The problem is any team has to defend exceptionally well away from home to keep a clean sheet, and defending quite well isn’t enough. Once we concede, and it’s largely irrelevant as to whether it’s a deflection or a ricochet off the centre-forwards shins, we simply don’t have the balance right to create serious chances going forward. Our ONLY attacking tactic on Tuesday was to get the ball up field as quickly as possible to Tyson, which, despite the 110% effort Tyson put in, was never going to pay off.

Only after we went 4-4-2 on Tuesday night did we (instantly) start looking like a threat up front. Sure, it then created chances at the other end as well, but IMHO we are more than a match standing toe to toe with enough teams in this division for the league position not to be an issue.

Taking the Watford match as an example of free-flowing, attacking football from both sides, we won a cracking game by the odd goal with bags of entertainment. Would it have been better on Tuesday night to have lost 2:3 in a tight end-to-end game, or play too defensively with no recourse once we concede ?

Forest fans have been spoilt in the past being successful AND playing attractive football. All most Forest fans want now is, again, a balance between the two. Dave Bassett didn’t get the stick for his (relative to Forest) long-ball game because he was successful, in the same way that Paul Hart never got the stick that his successors have had because of the attractive (but albeit eventually toothless) football.

If Forest were to finish mid-table this season playing 4-4-2 every week, with goals aplenty for and against, it would give us something to build on next season.

But as it stands now, we’re heading backwards, and downwards.