Through the seasons before us..

That’s Cobblers as in Northampton Town, of course, not the ability of the defender in question who is, of course, Luke Chambers. We’ve long been linked with the 21 year old Northampton captain, and obviously Smoulderwood will know more about him than the majority of managers out there, having worked with him there before taking the Forest job.

The Northampton chairman has been coy about which team made a six-figure bid for the player - but it’s widely thought to be either ourselves or Cardiff City, who are keen to bolster their defence following their recent freefall down the Championship table. Certainly Smoulders will have noticed our defending has been somewhat lacking lately; and he also clearly rates the youngster - but well, it’s nearly january, isn’t it? There’s bound to be loads of speculation.

We’re also being re-linked to the QPR midfielder Marc Bircham, who seems to spend all his time being “flattered” by interest in clubs before signing a new QPR deal eventually, according to a few QPR fans who responded on a forum to a previous story I posted about the midfielder - so now I’ve said it’s probably bollocks, we’ll probably sign him on new years day!!

Forest face Doncaster Rovers tomorrow in the last ever fixture to be played at Belle Vue (aka Earth Stadium) where we’ve enjoyed a pretty good past record - as recently as last year, well, this year in March, we beat them 2-1 in this fixture - although probably our most spectacular result there came in 1997/1998 when we demolished them 8-0 at Belle Vue in the League Cup - a stark reminder of our status now we’re meeting them in the league for the second year running!

Donny are unbeaten in their last six games; racking up four wins and two draws - although scoring only seven and letting in one, it would seem that their run of form is as much down to defensive miserlyness as goal-scoring panache.  Whilst Forest are on a rather shaky run in general, away form isn’t too bad with the AFC Bournemouth game a notable blip on the horizon - but recent memories of a rather shameful showing against Leyton Orient will loom large in the minds of most fans; hopefully the players will be keen to put that right at the first opportunity.

Doncaster have no injury fears, and haven’t played a competitive game for more than a week - so will be fighting fit and raring to go, and with a bit of luck they’ll be a little rusty on match practice - we’ll need to watch out for loanee Jonathan Forte (on loan from Sheffield United) and given an ex-Stag scored against us last week, perhaps we should also keep an eye out for ex-Magpie Paul Heffernan tomorrow who I’m sure will love to get one over on us.  Sean Thornton is the other name that stands out from the squad in midfield.

The Reds have doubts over John Curtis who picked up an ankle injury against Orient at the weekend; the probable replacement would be the versatile James Perch who lately lost his place in midfield to Gary Holt; which is a shame really, as I prefer Perchy in the middle with Clingan, and I really rate the contribution Curtis makes too.  But better that than pull Kris Commons back into the left midfield role, because of his lack of desire/willingness/capability to get back and defend.  Tyson I’m sure will be keen to end his goal drought of one game (heh), and it’s high time we saw some goalscoring action from Junior Agogo should he feature following his return from injury.

It’s going to be a tough game; Doncaster don’t let in many goals - and our defence isn’t as mean as it once was earlier in the season - I can see this being a tough and close game, and don’t feel particularly confident that it will be close in our favour.  Certainly Donny will want to leave Belle Vue with a bang, we’re on shaky form when you factor in Bournemouth and Orient, and they do owe us one looking at past meetings - but having said that, we do play better against the better teams in the league, and when Forest have disappointed us with a result they have, typically, followed it up with a good one - alas the latest time it was just a couple of good results before the next poor one, though.

.. my sneaky sources inform me that should the old desk that Nottingham Forest kindly donated to the statue fund reach £1,000 then the fund will pretty much hit the £60,000 target set all those months ago.

So those of you with a few Christmas pennies left to spend, click on this link and be generous - just think, if that desk had ears, what might it have witnessed in Forest history?

Doncaster’s ‘Belle Vue’ stadium (officially ‘The Earth’ stadium) is perhaps the most ironically named football ground in the country; Belle Vue of course, is French for “beautiful sight” - and a beautiful sight it most certainly ain’t, it’s best described as a hovel - and it’s a hovel that will be no more once we have travelled there to take part in the last ever game at the old ground that has been home to Doncaster Rovers since 1922.

Now for the benefit of those of you travelling, the ground does have a fairly interesting history - it once had a capacity of almost 40,000 which is now impossible to believe!  The record attendance is officially listed as 37,099 in 1948 against Hull City, although it is widely believed that there were many cheeky so and so’s climbing the walls to get in without paying as well.  However by the 1980’s the capacity was a tenth of this as mining subsidence was discovered under one of the stands.

They even had a chairman arrested after a game and he was subsequently found guilty of conspiracy to commit arson - he’d been involved in the fire that destroyed the mainstand in June 1995 and was sentenced to four years in prison!  Interestingly work on the ground has been undertaken as recently as 2003 and 2004 - despite the fact that Rovers will be moving to their new “Keepmoat” stadium after their fixture with us to see out their old ground.   Belle Vue now holds around 11,500 people - the new ground will be a 15,000 all seater.

Doncaster’s last game against Yeovil at Belle Vue was called off due to a frozen pitch - so we may see the game called off yet given the current weather conditions and forecasts.  So any travelling fans, make sure you (a) drive carefully and (b) keep the local radio on so you find out as soon as possible if the game is called off.  Even if you call it “The Earth Stadium”, it makes it sound like where “Earth FC” would play its fixtures when we discover life on other planets - so it’s still silly.

I laughed off Ronnie Moore’s outlandish claims that we had recalled John Thompson purely to mess with their mojo in the run-up to Christmas; but in an interview with the Nottingham Evening Post Smoulderwood has confirmed that that was a factor in his decision.  Feedback from Thommo’s performances for the nearly-Scousers as well as a look at where Tranmere Rovers were shaping up in the table made the wily manager decide to bring Thompson back.

Smoulders said the following when questioned about bringing back the versatile Irishman:

“It was for selfish reasons that we recalled him,” said Calderwood. “We had a look ahead at the fixtures coming up.  John has done well, we had good reports back from there about him.

“He gives us cover in a couple of positions, but particularly in defence, where he will eventually end up playing. They were also becoming one of our promotion rivals, so we did not really want to be doing them a favour.”

Couple of good things in there; but I was particularly pleased to read an almost throwaway comment in the last paragraph - he will eventually end up playing in defence.  Whilst I’ve always admired Thommo’s willingness to be shoehorned into the team in any position, it’s certianly defence where I prefer him to be - he’s never quite cut it as a midfielder for me, but in central defence or right-back (at a push) then if he plays up to his potential, he could be a useful player for us.

Discussing why he was recalled quickly but not played, Smoulds clarified:

“We did not want to recall him 24 hours before the Orient game or on Christmas Eve for the Boxing Day game,” he said. “We wanted him to be back here, very much settled and at home, to be part of the group again as soon as possible.”

Sensible policy - Smoulderwood often talks of “the group” in interviews, clearly dressing room harmony and a willingness of the team to work for each other is quite central to his ideas around man management - and that sounds good to me.  That said, given the performance on Saturday against Leyton Orient, “the group” could do with good hard kick up the arse!

Okay, so it’s not the Chelsea first team - but the Forest youth team continue their road to the FA Youth Cup final tonight by meeting the Chelsea tonight at the recreation ground in Aldershot.  The Forest youth side have already overcome Coventry Sphinx (why Sphinx?!) and Port Vale to get to this stage, and now will need to step up to the inevitably higher challenge of facing the West Londoners.

The winner of this game gets the “reward” of a trip to Liverpool - so they’ll need to make sure they check the locking nuts on the team bus wheels for that one!  These are good tests for our younger players though, and will hopefully give an indication to the club of those amongst our youth ranks who have the ability to start to be prepared for moving up into the senior squad over the next couple of years - good luck lads!

I’m not sure if anybody noticed, but our forthcoming FA Cup opponents Charlton Athletic (or should that be Charlton Arthritic as I’m sure Stress and Pie would call them) lost at home to League Two Wycombe Wanderers in the quarter finals of the Carling Cup last night.  Wycombe overcame Notts County in the previous round, so it was probably a case of “what might have been” for our neighbours - but certainly it’s another nail in the Charlton coffin - and surely their confidence taking a battering is good for us?

Charlton have a run in of Middlesbrough away, Fulham at home, Aston Villa at home and then Arsenal away before facing the trip to hardly-a-fortress City Ground on 6th January - not the toughest run-in, but for Charlton there are no easy games at the moment, so hopefully their poor run will continue and build to an almighty humiliating crescendo against Arsenal leaving the Addicks bereft of confidence when finally wending their way up the M1 to face us.  Having checked their fixtures, bless them, they still have the date for the FA Cup semi final on their fixture list!

Of course, the flipside of this could be that Charlton do indeed hit something approximating rock-bottom, and bounce back to get a result against us which may well kickstart some semblance of a fight against relegation from them.  But let’s not think about that!  Whilst it still grates a bit, we are the underdogs, and we really don’t have that much to lose, so long as we don’t get spanked, of course.

I suppose the other interesting thing to come from that match were the goalscoring antics of their Welsh forward Jermaine Easter - he’s scored in every round of the Carling Cup so far; and will surely be attracting interest from higher levels, such is the nature of “giantkilling” type performances, often players are picked up for higher levels.  As a forward he’s not exactly what we need I wouldn’t say really, but certainly we may well end up playing against him after January should someone be looking to replace a striker in a hurry, someone like Scunthorpe, perhaps?

Footballers aren’t renowned for their intelligence, and reading the article on the Evening Post website today is perhaps a little more revealing than it should be, if you read between the lines.  Of course, I could be being outrageously paranoid, but some of skipper Ian Breckin’s uncarefully chosen words do hint at something I’ve suspected for a while, and it’s partly this that makes me still not quite comfortable with our current playing personnel.

You see, footballers are wrapped in cotton wool - that’s the problem.  You and I know only too well what it’s like to have a bit of a tosser of a boss, but you still work to the best of your ability, because if you don’t, you lose your job - and in reality, not in football land, you lose your income.  There’s no paying off of contracts, that’s it, nada, you’re gone.  Footballers have so much power that they can seemingly not make an effort, with no fear through loss of income.

This is what I believe happened to us last season.  An element of a successful side is of course driven by team spirit or “a good dressing room”, but ultimately even when those things are broken, it is still possible to function - when we had our very own “wanker boss” of Gary Megson, I firmly believe certain members of our squad literally downed tools and didn’t even try; they did it most obviously away from home, because they didn’t have the nerve to at the City Ground.

And that’s why it concerns me that Smoulders has retained such a large number of Megson’s players - it’s true that he’s cleared out some dead wood, but I worry that if times become difficult (such as now, when players are showing obvious signs of complacency) and Smoulds needs to deal with it he could end up with the same “strike” mentality from some of the upstarts amongst the ranks.

I’m sure that Smoulderwood will have an idea about these possibilities - I seem to recall he’d had a chat with Megson shortly after taking the post; and Charlie McParland will no doubt have an inside scoop on any potential rebel leaders in the playing staff - but well, it just reaffirms to me that as Megson took a deserved shoeing from the Forest community for his role as manager, some players who still feature for us probably should take a tad more of the blame for our demise than they do - and I worry they might do it again.

By stating that respect for the boss is the key to this seasons performance, it follows that a lack of it drove our poor performances under Megson.  Now just from whispers I’ve heard I can understand why many of the players didn’t respect the ginger one, but that’s the problem, surely whether you respect your manager or not you should work hard for the supporters?  Maybe I’m too much of an idealist.

Former Forest, Derby and Villa waster Gary Charles is behind bars after failing to control his self-confessed alcoholism.  The twice-capped rightback flirted with prison after attacking a woman in a taxi-rank earlier in the year - and was warned that any similar types of offence would lead to a spell inside.  Instead he had a community service order which he fulfilled.

Unfortunately, his self-control was about as good as the dodgy performances I remember from him in a Forest shirt, he got pissed again earlier this month and threatened a doorman for reasons as yet undermined.  The judge said “There really does come a time when the police and everyone else has to have a rest from Gary Charles. I hope it knocks some sense into his head.”  Hmm, here’s hoping!

Part of me finds Gary Charles almost twice-yearly humiliations quite funny; admittedly he set the bar quite high when being found in his car covered in his own faeces, but he seems to find new and interesting ways to make an idiot out of himself; but more overwhelmingly I feel sorry for him - he wasn’t the most gifted player I’ve ever seen, but he has clearly struggled to come to terms with alcoholism - hopefully a stretch inside will help to straighten him out.

My abiding memory of Gary Charles will always be a trip to the Baseball Ground, when a Steve Stone shot was deflected over the despairing keeper by a certain hapless right-back - creating chants of “Nice one Gary! Nice one Son! Nice one Gary! Let’s ‘ave another one!”.  Happy days!

It’s been confirmed that friday night’s “Clough Aid” gig raised more than the target of £2,000, and combine that to the cheque from LTLF for online sales and donations from supporters the fund is just a tantalising £2,500 away from reaching the £60,000 target. 

Given that there are numerous items on eBay raising money for the fund, including an old desk donated by Forest that Clough himself may have used, then a Christmas target is surely not unrealistic?

In that spirit, I urge everyone to take a look at www.ltlf.co.uk/clough as well as the auctions on eBay and be generous - I know it’s Christmas and we’re all counting the pennies, but it’s so bloody close now it’s painful!  Once the fundraising is finished the committee can get onto the not inconsiderable task of recruiting a sculptor to create the statue, and of course, liase with the council to find a suitable spot for it in the city centre.

All together now; “BRIAN CLOUGH’S A FOOTBALL GENIUS!”