Most employers have some kind of review process to see how well employees are getting on in their role, and they’re often split into quarterly or half yearly sessions to track the performance of said employee. It’s been around six months since Smoulders took charge of Forest, and I imagine that heading off to meet with either Mark Arthur or Nigel Doughty (or both) for his performance review he’d be feeling pretty confident, he might even chance it and have a little swagger as he walked into the office.
The key objective for us this season is promotion, that’s without a doubt – and of course, there are three ways Colin could have delivered that to us – acceptable would be a playoff win, good would be automatic promotion from a second place finish, excellent would be winning the league. Well on point one we are most certainly on course for excellent – six points clear at the start of December is an excellent start to his career, without question.
Nearly as important would be to rationalise the personnel – Gary Megson brought in a lot of players, and – with the bridging period of Charlie and Frank – it has been down to Colin to rationalise that squad into a team that gets results. Obviously this process feeds objective number one, so must have been going well – but Colin was quick to cover Nathan Tyson’s injury through signing Junior Agogo, as well as decommissioning deadwood like David Friio, Nicky Eaden and David Johnson. He’s also loaned younger players out to get some experience or regular first team football. The only question mark in this area is his accepting of a bid for leading scorer Grant Holt.
Tertiary concerns would be the cup competitions – and defeat to Accrington Stanley in the Carling cup is a significant blemish on this score; however a decent run in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy was only just ended on penalties against the strongest other team in the competition – in my opinion – and non-league Salisbury City stand between us a potentially big FA Cup 3rd round tie – so depending on the outcome of this, the Accrington result could become a faded memory.
In summary, Smoulderwood’s first half year in charge has to be considered a successful one; he is delivering excellence in our league placing, building a significant gap in the league table with only 19 games gone – if we can maintain the form we’ve enjoyed so far then we would be on course for around 99 points; which is the title, basically – since much of our run was without Nathan Tyson in the side, and the possibility of strengthening in January, who can say that we won’t improve our form and try to smash the 100 point mark?
Filed under: Thoughts
I had to laugh at that last line. There’s always a place for optimism but one game at a time n all that please!! You can guarentee that our team will make life hell, raise our blood pressures and do away with the fingernails before May. Winning the league so easily is not something I’m even prepared to contemplate.
The bottom line is so far good for Smoulders like you say but I still feel that the jury remains out from the point of view of some fans. And I think its down to the way we’re playing. Whilst we never should expect champaign football at this level, we do still see glimpses of what we can do, usually when we go a goal up and get the confidence to really attack teams, but until that point we’ve tended looked sluggish. A full 90 minutes where we are on top would be nice, but perhaps too much to expect!
I’m well and truely happy with what Calderwood has done for our club since he’s been here and what C&F did before that..yet there is a part of me that finds it difficult to accept that we may actually now be on the up!
Oh I’m not counting any chickens just yet – the spirit of this is to appraise the season to date – and set a target for the remainder, which should surely be to match – or preferably better – what we’ve done so far!