The excellent Paul Severn has put together a superb summary which right attracted a lot of attention at the weekend. Christian Brown's considered reply demonstrated a fascinating alternative take and, hopefully, that fans are capable of disagreeing politely while still passionately making their case.
Those two takes deliver a big picture assessment so, in a bid not to cover the same ground, I'm going to try to answer the question 'why didn't we get promotion this season?'. I'm not necessarily saying that we should have achieved this, but feel it's worth looking back at the moments and themes that led us to 9th place, eight places and 13 points better off than 2017/18 but still short of achieving the dream.
It took us a while to get going
At the start of the season, Aitor Karanka was still searching for his best line-up. Nowhere is this more evident than the defence - with seven different back fours tried in the first ten league and cup games. The points haul from the first ten league games wasn't bad - better than in both Billy Davies play-off campaigns - but we were definitely still finding our feet in the opening encounters and were 11th after ten fixtures, two places below where we finished.
Grabban's strange season
The £6 million man had a funny first season in Forest colours. As Karanka searched for a winning formula in the early games, Grabban wasn't a guaranteed starter and he took until September 19th to net his first goal. From then until December 1 he went on a scoring spree (barring some penalties that are best not mentioned) and had 15 goals to his name after a brace in a home win against Ipswich. Injuries and the poor form of the team meant that he finished with 17 in total, however, and the side badly missed an on-form fit Grabban after Christmas. If the mid-September-to-December Grabban form had been replicated for the rest of the season, there's a very good chance that this alone could have earned us the extra points needed to squeeze into the play-offs.
Coping with pressure
Is it any wonder that Forest's best performance of the season - the 3-0 mauling of Middlesbrough - came once the chance of making the top six had completely disappeared? The inability to cope with pressure and expectation held the side back throughout. Karanka spoke about this after the League Cup victory over Newcastle, when he suggested his players found it much easier to express themselves against Premier League opponents. He said: "The game today has been, for me, confirmation that the team is not performing well because we are under big pressure." He added: "When we approach a game under pressure we are not ourselves." The inability to cope with the pressure of being favourites continued to dog the squad, including in late season showings away to the likes of Ipswich and Rotherham.
Defensive crisis
We'll never know what Martin O'Neill would have done in January if he'd already had a settled back four to start with. By the end of January, however, we didn't have the use of any of the four centre halves who's started the campaign - with Dawson, Figueiredo and Hefele all injured and Fox sold. Stable, promotion challenging sides shouldn't really be rebuilding the heart of their defence in the middle of the campaign. The incoming players - Yohan Benalouane, Alex Milosevic and Molla Wague - have all done pretty well in fairness but it's a crisis we could've done without and it made it impossible to have a settled side. Dawson's leadership and assured passing were badly missed after his season-ending injury in the December 1 Ipswich win.
We've changed manager again
Yet again we've reached the end of the season with a different manager in the dugout. Aitor Karanka's departure was disappointing and felt unnecessary. We'll never know exactly what went on between the boss and the board, but there was the distinct suggestion that he fell out with the club hierarchy after being put under pressure to deliver more. His departure seemed inevitable by the end and the dragged out nature of his demise didn't help matters. With Martin O'Neill in the dugout we were back to the 'experimentation stage' of the first ten games with some decidedly mixed results. You felt that if - and it's a big if - we were going to succeed this season we needed to stick to the Karanka 4-2-3-1 blueprint and have a coherent style and strategy. Some fans are less keen on O'Neill than others, but the fact is that he ended the campaign in ninth, exactly where we were when he took over. He probably needed a miracle to win promotion and fell some way short of that. The football played under him was poor at times and there's definite room for improvement there. My personal view is that the destabilising effect of a change was costlier than anything else and we've got to break the cycle of change at some point. Others clearly believe the choice of replacement was a reason in its own right. Whichever side you're on, the management situation clearly contributed.
Trying to 'force it' in games
Aitor Karanka's aim was supposed to be to deliver promotion by the end of his contract (ie next summer) yet it's clear that the club wanted to push to deliver this ambition quicker. I can't help but feeling that the pressure to deliver immediate results forced both managers into some oddly gung ho substitutions to try to force results. The QPR home game stood out for this and I do wonder if a crazy push for goals is what caused Karanka to send Gil Dias on to try to see out the game at Carrow Road when more sensible options were available to him. At Ipswich, O'Neill threw forwards onto the pitch despite the fact we didn't have control of the ball to create chances for them.
The Carvalho conundrum
At the start of the season it was clear that the club could field an XI that would be an improvement on the previous campaign - just not by how much. Much was made of the club's £25 million splurge - and we quickly grew tired of the 'big spending Nottingham Forest' tag - but, in truth, most of the investment went on two people, Lewis Grabban and Joao Carvalho. The 22-year-old Portuguese playmaker has lit up the last few games his vision, passing and trickery, yet it hasn't been plain sailing. The rigours of the Championship presented a physical and mental test for the £13 million man and he was showing signs of needing a rest by Christmas. However, he's actually done better with the physical side of the game than I thought he would and has shown a strong work ethic too. Martin O'Neill took a while to find a role for Carvalho and without him our play was too unimaginative, becoming too heavily reliant on Joe Lolley. Whether the manager liked it or not, we'd put much of the focus on Carvalho by investing so heavily in him and we had little option but to turn to him for some magic on the ball. Carvalho will be better for the experience of this season - but you feel we need to find a little more creativity elsewhere too. It's too simplistic to say that we'd have definitely won more games with Carvalho in the side, but it's apparent that we're already overly-reliant on him to be able to play good football.
The misfiring cavalry
While Grabban, Carvalho and Lolley make for an impressive attacking triumvirate it's fair to say that things didn't pan out that well for the men meant to supplement that firepower. Gil Dias flattered to deceive - and blotted his copybook with a disastrous sub-showing at Norwich. Diogo Goncalves struggled with the physical test of the Championship while Hilal Soudani - a useful 'supersub' early on - had his season curtailed by injury. Karim Ansarifard showed glimpses of getting to grips with the demands of playing up front in the Championship towards the end of the season, but couldn't quite fill a Grabban-shaped hole in the team and left us turning to Daryl Murphy all-too-often. The loan signing of Leo Bonatini promised much and delivered little too. The likes of Norwich rescued results wit strong comebacks - our misfiring cavalry made those rousing finishes tougher to muster.
Ill discipline
We might have finished 9th overall but we finished rock bottom of the division's fair play league. Jack Colback's 15 yellow cards and Jack Robinson's 11 contributed more than their fair share of the team's 102 bookings (57 more than Swansea) and both players suffered damaging suspensions. I don't think we're necessarily a dirty team, but cutting out the cards would certainly be a big help next season.
The nature of the league
Spending £25 million alone was no guarantee of success and that's partly due to the harsh reality of the Championship these days. A collection of big clubs with big parachute payments - and smaller well-run ones with a smart plan - mean that it'll take more than one summer spree to help us stand out from a crowded field of contenders. I'm not sure I was ever confident that there weren't more than six better teams in the division.
Right, well, that's my two penneth. What do you reckon? Do you agree that these ten factors held us back in 2018/19?
