Smoulders: Gone in the wake of a shameful performance against Doncaster..
Nottingham Forest – 2
Doncaster Rovers – 4
Those two lateish goals make this scoreline, whilst not respectable, appear not as bad as this game actually was. Without being disrespectful to our visitors, to be three-nil down – and deservedly so – at half time against the bottom of the league team is generally a pretty unacceptable state of affairs. To do so whilst being so hopeless and without any fight doubly so.
Of course, Donny are no strangers to us of late – we know they’re a passing side, and today they showed that – passing rings around us at will. They typically don’t score many, nor do they let many in, today our clown defending allowed one of those statistics to be emphatically shattered before half time, and some Nathan Tyson-inspired resurgence saw Rovers ship a couple too later on in the game.
Oddly Smoulds opted to change the side that performed well at Southampton, dropping Thornhill and Davies in favour of Perch returning from suspension, and McGugan recovering from injury. Now, on paper that’s understandable, I’m a big admirer of the role of both players, but I’m also a big believer of not changing something that works. Tough call, really, I suppose – and had the result been better we probably wouldn’t have questioned it.
Having moved seats to the Upper Brian Clough stand to accommodate some seasonal familial visitors, it was interesting to listen the fans in Capital One corner, who graduated from chants of ‘Calderwood’s red n white army’, and berating some fellow fans who presumably had some kind of banner (and were eventually ejected to jeers of ‘You should’ve sat with the Donny!’.
In the midst of this Rovers scored their second, and of course it wasn’t long before vitriol was being spat in whatever direction fans were facing. Understandable, as we were awful – but it really shows up Forest fans as so fickle that they can’t make their mind up over 90 minutes – because within an hour they’d be singing ‘You will be sacked in the morning!’ Silly or what? Perhaps, but well, if that were 11 men playing for a manager they like, then they don’t like him very much.
Smoulds got it pretty much spot on post-match, he said we were awful with the ball – but even worse without it. We were hopeless. Lynch was horrifically bad-mouthed by sections of the crowd, and he was pretty awful, no, he was terrible. Smoulderwood suggested that he was injured rather than subbed at half time just before being rubbish, which perhaps might mitigate some of the terribleness.
So anyway, the game – it was woeful, turgid and poor – you don’t need to hear any more than that. Nathan Tyson really made a difference when he came on as a substitute; and that’s about all there is to smile about. Except breaking news that this result has cost Smoulderwood his job.
Thanks for your efforts, Colin – but you really had to go. Kerslake has gone too.
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