Forest nil 0:1 Wolves

In the Lincolnshire Poacher before the game for what is turning into a little bit of a pre-match tradition, blow drinking near the ground, the beer’s rubbish anyway, stay in the Poacher and get a taxi down around 2’ish, sorted. The Fullers ‘Nook’ the best of the three I tried. Interesting really, as I can’t abide their London Pride, neither the drink nor the sentiment.

I say the beer’s c**p near the ground, until a swift Deuchars in, of all places, the Southbank Bar proved me wrong.

I wasn’t looking forward to the game itself. Having already been to Wolves last August and seen us ship five in exactly the same spineless manner as last week I was fearing the worst.

Wolves were the better side, have better players and are clearly heading for promotion. Forest didn’t create a single effort on target.

So why do I feel a bit gutted we didn’t come away with a point ?

We certainly didn’t deserve to get all three by any means, but then neither did Premier League bound Wolves.

Tactically, defensively at least, Billy Davies ripped Mick McCarthy a new one. McCarthy has filled his team with big clogging centre halves and big clumsy centre forwards in the hope of just clumsily barging their way to promotion.

And they’ll get there, but only because the rest of the teams at the top are bottling it in a bigger, more clumsily way.

Wolves will go up, but if they can be held back by a team seemingly heading for relegation to the third division, then it’s not going to take Premier League defences much work to stop them, certainly if Mick ‘one tactic’ McCarthy is still there.

And besides, that’s Wolves problems, we don’t need to be interested in them again for at least 18 months.

Forest will stay up, but only if they can play with the same spirit as Saturday, if they can balance out the defensive duties with actually attacking once or twice, if they get that little bit of luck that’s been absent for large parts of this season, if they can bolster the attack.

It’s all a big IF.