This year’s fixture release had more than a whiff of ‘the end of Bullseye’ about it, didn’t it? With little prospect of actually going to games just yet, we’ve been presented with ‘what we could’ve won’ were there no pandemic. Instead of an inappropriate speedboat, we’re missing out on trips to QPR, Huddersfield and Blackburn.
Of course, the hipster argument is to shrug and say that the fixtures never matter. We’re going to play everyone twice, so why care which order the games come in? Well, that’s alright if you assume that being a football fan involves cool-headed logic. Doesn’t being a fan really involve getting slightly over-obsessed by the tiniest detail? We care about shirt collars, formations, songs, silly stats and when we’re going to Reading. It might be ‘sad’, but who cares? I normally enjoy scouring through the schedule to map out possible away days (and usually to moan that the best trips are on rubbish days). But, this time even I can see that there’s little point getting too invested into what amounts to little more than a set of TV listings at the moment.
Transfer trio offer positive signs
The signs so far have been positive. I thought it was right to stick by Lamouchi and build on the foundations established last season – not least with such a short break between the two campaigns. Even if we’d wanted to do something drastic, it really wasn’t the right moment. We’ve recruited quickly – and smartly – to sign three free transfers to help too. In Jack Colback, Tyler Blackett and Lyle Taylor, we’ve captured experienced players with a proven record who will fight for first team roles and should add much-needed depth to the core group of potential starters. I won’t profess to know too much about the backroom appointments – but hopefully these have also been recruited in a bid to give extra support to a manager who has earned it.
This year has to be about evolution, not revolution. Signings also have to be about quality and not quantity and the work on the training ground needs to build on the good things about last season. This time last year, we were pondering a lot of unknowns. The manager proved himself worthy of more time while the likes of Brice Samba, Samba Sow, Yuri Ribeiro and Sammy Ameobi became established in the first team core – leaving us needing a couple of additions and depth, rather than scrabbling around trying to build again from scratch.
Not good enough at home
Chief among those, for me, is finding a plan to play at home. When the onus was on us to play on the front foot last season – and when there was an expectation to perform – we underwhelmed. We were, as I noted in the Famous Club’s post mortem, the division’s third best away team – based on points earned – but only the 13th best at home. Indeed, we mustered five fewer points at home than in the 2016/17 season, when we only survived on the final day of the season. A little more creativity and flair in midfield seem key to this.
Some of the challenges awaiting Sabri and co seem straightforward to fix. We clearly needed better options from the bench to change a game – and a deeper squad capable of fitting into different formations against different opposition. For whatever reason, the likes of Alfa Semedo, Adama Diakhaby, John Bostock and Rafa Mir were never really able to offer a meaningful contribution on a consistent basis. The lack of options in the squad also meant we became over-reliant on a small core of first teamers who subsequently suffered from burn out as the long season wore on. It was abundantly clear we needed more firepower to support Grabban, fresh legs in the middle and a left footed defender to play three at the back if needed. With all of those secured, a number 10 and a winger are surely next on the radar.
The noises coming out of the club suggest the hierarchy accepts that some of the recruitment hasn’t quite been good enough and are keen to put that right. It is, however, important that we recognise that signings aren’t everything. Bristol City, for example, splashed the cash on Nakhi Wells in January and saw their promotion push fade away. We could easily have spent big in the mid-season window on decent players and still missed out and shouldn’t allow ourselves to believe this was the one simple answer to our problems. It’s crucial to both continue to blood youngsters and to coach the existing squad to improve. Who, for example, could be this year’s Matty Cash and take their game up a level? Ryan Yates? Alex Mighten? Brennan Johnson? With an eye-wateringly high wage bill and little FFP wriggle room, we have to find some of the missing pieces to the puzzle from within.
Changing the mentality
Yet, while it’s relatively straightforward to pinpoint the gaps in the team and squad, other issues might be less simple to resolve. The mentality of the players and their ability to perform under pressure has been questioned long before Sabri Lamouchi came to the club and remains so. The Stoke debacle only added to the sense that, when the chips are down, we struggle to cope. Even Lamouchi himself raised the fact that people had mentioned ‘typical Forest’ when we blew chances to cement a top six spot ahead of that last game. Which of us fans can truly say they’ve not thought ‘here we go again’ when we’ve conceded a goal or had a set back during a season. All too often that spills into moans and groans in the stadium or petulant comments to players on social media. Thanks to years of underperformance, we’re all stuck in a rut and need to get out of it. Last season offered both the hope that we were moving on from the mediocre days of recent times – and also proof for the pessimists that we’d somehow always find a way to mess things up.
The end of season disaster could, if handled well, prove a powerful motivating message. The players could go out on a mission to put that behind them and go one better this time around. Yet, there’s also the chance that it could go the other way and be a millstone around our neck. You feel the manager, in particular, needs an early sign that the next campaign will be more a case of the former than the latter if he’s to retain the support of the ownership going forward – and keep sceptics at bay.
The challenge of the Championship
It’s hard, too, to know what to expect from our rivals. It’s been a long-held view of mine that the Championship is best seen as one big mid table. There’s so little gap in quality between top and bottom – and almost all of the teams at this level will harbour some sort of ambition to challenge at the top end of the table. Michael O’Neill’s Stoke – our final day nemeses – might well be on course to get themselves in the mix this time around, while I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mark Robins’ Coventry side continue their momentum after an excellent League One campaign. Those are two hunches of mine – but there’s a case to be made for most of the rest too. A truncated campaign, with some particularly crowded months (eight games in December, six in February) make the campaign seem tougher than ever to predict. Stamina, motivation and luck will all be needed – on top of skill, consistency and mentality – in a gruelling looking schedule.
It’s easy to fall into the sort of smug arrogance that other fans accuse of us of when looking ahead to 2020/21. While Watford and Bournemouth might not appear to be clubs of the stature of Leeds, West Brom or Fulham, we have to face up to the fact that they’ve both been run a lot better than us in recent years and shouldn’t be underestimated – especially not with parachute payments in their back pockets. Some have argued that ‘we’ll never have a better chance’ – but that’s based on judgements of our rivals that are to tricky to make before a ball is kicked and partly on ‘names’.
Cash to go?
There is also, of course, an elephant in the room. A high profile departure is still likely during this window. You have to feel we’ve seen the last of Matty Cash in a Forest shirt and Joe Worrall might also find his way to the Premier League too. Like it or not, the way we’ve seemed to have approached the FFP challenge is to rely on players sales to plug a gap in the finances. We have to hope that a bidding war among top flight clubs can at least ensure we get a fair price for 2019/20’s deserved player of the year. We need a plan in place for how to plug the gaps if they go – and have to hope that we’re not stuck with a long-running and disruptive saga that goes to the last hour of the window.
There was – understandably – a lot of doom and gloom when the season ended. It felt like a missed opportunity and another play-off debacle to add to the Sheffield United, Yeovil and Blackpool list. Yet, while the manner of the failure was crushing, the truth was surely that we weren’t quite good enough to go up. Both teams that contested the final seemed a level above us – and we’d have needed an almighty flurry of transfer activity if we’d somehow managed to sneak through. Clearly, it would’ve been better to miss out in the play-offs with pride intact, but let’s not pretend that was a golden chance to go up with a side ready to strut its stuff in the top flight.
It’s also worth reflecting on the fact that, despite our understanding of ‘typical Forest’, end of season disasters haven’t always led to problems in the following campaign. We probably fear that a good side will be ‘dismantled’ because the Paul Hart side drifted apart after the Sheffield United play-off collapse. Yet the season after the Yeovil play-off shambles? We were promoted back to the Championship. After the Blackpool humbling? Another play-off campaign. I’m not saying we’ll definitely bounce back strongly next season – but there’s no reason to assume the worst automatically. We’re not ‘cursed’, we just haven’t quite yet been good enough.
Sabri’s second season should be a fascinating one. Let’s hope it end up being out-of-the-ordinary because of what’s achieved as much as for how it’s impacted by the pandemic.
