Through the seasons before us..

I’m amazed it’s taken me this long to succumb to the charms of the BBC online League One predictor.  That said, it’s getting late and I’m about ready to hit the hay, so I only predicted until the end of March.  Admittedly, such things are meaningless - if I were any good at predicting football scores I’d be a rich man! 

There’s the usual considerations to factor in - there will be the freak results that none of us predict, like Millwall actually winning a game, or Swansea losing - but I’ve tried to apply what limited knowledge I have and have come up with a surprisingly pleasing league table.  Obviously I’ve built in the necessary improvement in away form, which - resultswise at least - is yet to materialise.

So if you click the link above, you’ll be able to have a bash at it yourself - I think it’s quite interesting to see what you all come up with.  In my scenario, with five or six games to play, Swansea are runaway Champions, but the battle for automatic is still very much open - with us and Donny fighting it out - but the playoffs are open too with Walsall and Orient just sitting outside.

What does your league table look like?

Courtesy of Stress and Pie - this made me chuckle away a good portion of my lunch break, much to the consternation of my colleagues when I tried to explain it!  Worked wonders for lightening my mood, then making me feel annoyed again because it’s probably not all that far removed from what really happens!  Still, enjoy!

The Mexican stand-off between Smoulderwood and the fans looks set to rumble on, after the manager decided to criticise the support levels in his post-match comments at the weekend.  Whilst I do have some sympathy with his sentiments, I do think he’s unwise to ruffle feathers any more than he need to right now, with many supporters teetering on the brink of whether they want to back his tenure or not.

“What I found surprising was the real lack of appetite and apathy of the fans when we didn’t score in the first 20 minutes, it was minimal support to the team and can’t happen.  We’re sitting with a promotion run going and they should be urging the team on.”

So whilst he’s talking a lot of sense, it’s an ill-advised move for him to be critical of fans who have never been particularly famed for generating a cauldron of noise.  Brian Clough criticised it, and he was within his right to, he was producing wonderful football and delivering silverware.  Smoulderwood is delivering neither, despite having what most fans agree is a squad capable of producing the goods at this level.

If you want vocal backing, Smoulders, then you need to send the team out to attack from the off - but you will never get the kind of vocal backing you get away from home (which is odd, as generally the performances are worse away from home!).  While you’re at it, you might want to consider lobbying the powers-that-be to move the away fans from the loudest bit of the ground - put a bit of unreserved seating down in the Lower Bridgford for supporters who want to chant - you’ll notice the difference.

So I do have some sympathy with him, it infuriates me when there is booing at half time, I often wish we could have more atmosphere at home matches, I wish that our fans came up with more imaginative chants - but the fact is, a combination of dour football, the wider contribution of all-seater stadia and ridiculously draconian stewarding and general malaise makes this unlikely.

However underpinning all that, it’s generally a bad idea for a manager to bad-mouth his fans when they turn up in their thousands at this level of football - to generally watch a standard of play that is below the capabilities of our resources and players.  If you want to do something realistic to help the fans back the team, Smoulds, then have a word with the security teams who patrol the fans - I’ve known people banned for 3 games for the heinous crime of standing up and singing a song to back the team.

Some think he’s already at the bar, and has ordered a lethal dose of firewater.

Hundreds of you were up late tonight, judging by the stats for this site, and looking at the “who’s online’ sections on numerous forums - alas, unless they are very late in making any announcements, Forest have once again spectacularly failed to bring anybody in at this critical point of the season.  To rub salt in the wounds, they’ve allowed the influential Neil Lennon to bugger off on a free!

The Leon Best saga never transpired owing either naive mindgames or a fixed idea of what the player was worth from Forest, and from downright greed from Coventry - who had only just got their hand in their not-particularly-deep pockets to pay up what they still owed for him to Southampton. 

Why on Earth we targeted Neil Danns, a man who has rejected us more times than I care to remember in the past, I’ll never know.  I imagine Neil Warnock is even now drafting a thank you note to us for making the groundwork in establishing the player’s availability, just as Gordon Strachan probably is as we kindly revealed Dundee United’s breaking point in selling their captain Barry Robson.

As for the ‘plan B’ and ‘plan C’ options, well, I can’t see them either - the late rumour of Billy Sharp had a few folk going, but it never seemed massively likely - unless it was on the cards should Bolton come in for Tyson, but to be honest, I can’t really see that happening either.  We need to add a striker, not swap one.

So we’re left with our signing from Bromley FC - and of course, the inevitable comments from Smoulds tomorrow about his cunning plans to make use of the loan system which is available from 11th February.  Yeah, I can’t wait to see what surprises you have in store for us there!  So now I’m tired, grumpy and will be shattered at work tomorrow - all for absolutely sod all!

Still, at least we got namechecked on the BBC rumours page during our vigil, greetings Jonathan!  At, because I don’t like to sound like a big fat whingebag, I found this video of our sole arrival in January on YouTube via a Forest forum, and it did cheer me up a little bit.  Garath McCleary certainly looks to have a bit of talent.  Chins up!

Some nice goals (and dubious celebrations!), but it doesn’t get me my lost sleep back - if anyone at the City Ground is reading this, I realise that we should have realised that absolutely naff all was going to happen this evening, but for future reference, if you could just remind us of this - in an official capacity - at about 10:00pm, it would be much appreciated.

NB. If it transpires that Forest refused to pay their webmaster double-time for a nightshift, and announcements of lots of juicy signings appear in the morning, then I reserve the right to retract my grumpiness!

… which I realise is a completely fruitless pursuit, as I type there are four hours remaining of the transfer window, after which we can spend a month speculating and foaming-at-the-mouth about potential loan signings.  It would seem that today, as I posted last night, Barry Robson did indeed opt for Celtic - and who can really blame him?

The Leon Best saga rumbles on, with Coventry really rather taking the piss with their valuation of a player they paid £650k for in the summer - turning down another bid (reported to be £1.2m - but who knows how accurate that is?), despite Dowie apparently resigned to losing him for the right price.  All this on the back of him getting shot of Kevin Kyle and Dele Adebola!

Given the magnitude of the bids in question, it’s hard to criticise Forest’s ambition - two million-pound plus bids (reportedly), and whilst we could be cynical and suggest neither targets were likely to materialise, I think that would be a step too far.  That said, it’s infuriating how late in the day we seem to have left our dealings again.

I realise selling clubs will hold out ’til late to maximise their likely returns - however how difficult can it be to give the team you want to do business with a call and say “Ay up, mate - how much d’you want for the player, then?” - sure, you might not offer that, but it should stop this seemingly pointless to-ing and fro-ing.

Alas, though, there’s nowt to report - and I’m consigned to another night of sitting up later than I ought to through fear of missing out on a breaking piece of news!  Any sensible person would of course ignore it ’til the morning when all will become apparent, but I never claimed to be a sensible person!

Who lives in a house like this?  Below are the notes made by a worker from a cleaning company to help the other cleaners upon their first day of cleaning the house of Colin Smoulderwood.  It makes interesting reading for you voyeuristic types, and of course, from somebody’s home we can make all sorts of links with their professional life!

The first job was to do the dusting, upon searching high and low I finally found the duster in the fruit bowl.  On the mantelpiece were some brass ornaments that needed a polish, I eventually found a tin of Brasso inside the fridge, next to a bottle of Cillit Bang which I used to clean the sink and hob.

The kitchen surface cleaner was to be found inside the toilet cistern, and the bathroom cleaner in the larder cupboard in the kitchen.  Deciding to tackle the hoovering, I found the vacuum cleaner in the shed at the bottom of the large garden.  The Toilet Duck was in the loft, and the toilet brush in the umbrella holder in the porch.

I had to throw some things out in the kitchen, as the client seems to keep his milk in the microwave, cheese on top of the television and salad produce pegged out on the washing line.  Certainly this is the most challenging house I’ve ever had to tackle, everything in the house seems to be placed in an inappropriate place!

Hmm, I wonder what conclusions we can draw from the way that Smoulders home life seems to be organised?  It seemed a much more amusing idea when I thought of it, but sod it!

Childish, but amusing.  A commenter on the site called bedfordred spotted an article in the Gazetta Dello Sport that likened our own Junior Agogo to George Foreman, the boxer-turned-kitchen-appliance-salesman.  The Ghanian striker has been making the headlines for his performances in the African Nations Cup - so surely a lucrative product-endorsement is only a matter of time for the Forest hitman?

Hmm, no wonder I never made it as a graphic designer!  For any Italian speakers, the article that makes the comparison is just here.

I don’t want people to think I’m picking on Perchy.  I know he had a bad game last night, but overall I like him a great deal as a player - plus when searching for images of him on Google you’re often rewarded with great shots of anglers called James who have caught a Perch.  Okay, perhaps that’s just me then.

Anyway, amongst the comments from the Millwall match report - I started to talk about my fears of Smoulds and his propensity to play people out of position, which is what I think he did with Perch that night.  You see, not that long ago Perchy played excellently at rightback.  A position that Smoulders said he was going to get a shot at preseason.  Unfortunately for James, Smoulds prefers to play Chambers (a centreback) there.

And it doesn’t end there.  We’ve seen Grant deployed very ineffectively on the wing.  We’ve seen a midfield four comprising of all central midfielders.  We’ve seen Wes, Perch and Wilson at left back.  We’ve all moaned about it indefinitely - so I’ve decided to make it simple, in picture form - Perchy is singled out for no other reason than he is one of several players who Smoulds doesn’t utilise to his strengths, and because I find pictures of anglers amusing.

We have a very capable squad of players, which Clough willing, we’ll be strengthening during the alarmingly diminishing transfer window.  I firmly believe that playing the best players in their natural positions, with a sensible and progressive formation (how does four four two sound?) will yield both performances and results.  It might not happen immediately, but it will eventually.  There, I feel better now.  I’m off to bed!

It would appear that Plan A was getting Leon Best from Coventry.  Now, some people still seem relatively convinced that this chase might not be as pointless as it would first appear - as far as I know, Coventry haven’t yet paid for the striker, or not completely, and despite an apparent takeover still have dodgy finances.  It’s true Best has spoken of his contentment being there, but he’s bound to say that, isn’t he?  It’s no good saying “COME AND GET ME, FOREST!” only for the transfer to fall through, now, is it?

So perhaps Plan A is still active, but it does make me nervous.  We all know the old adage about putting all of your eggs in one basket, which is why perhaps the out-of-the-blue appearance of a Plan B had softened this nervousness a tad amongst the Forest-supporting world.  Plan B of course was Paul Taylor, a none league striker we took on trial, and who apparently impressed in a reserve appearance by both scoring and creating a goal against West Brom.

Word on the street is that Forest did indeed bid for him, they bid £50k to Vauxhall Motors for him.  Exactly the same amount that Chester City bid for him fairly recently, exactly the same amount that Vauxhall Motors flatly refused, valuing the player more highly.  Of course, we can’t be sure of the numbers - but if true then it’s not exactly the first time we’ve come some way short of meeting a valuation of player and allow them to sign elsewhere (Edwards to Wolves from Luton being a very recent example).

Taylor is now apparently on trial with Leeds United, who seemingly hoover up all the kind of players that we’re meant to be on the lookout for.  That said, whilst the cat and mouse game Forest tend to play with targets is irksome, I think I marginally prefer this to the apparent scattergun approach that Leeds have to signing anyone and everyone.  Much of their success so far this season is based upon a fairly tight and talented squad - such an influx of players in January could upset the applecart.

And so, I’m hoping that we do have a Plan C just incase.  I have no idea nor inside knowledge about the Best saga - certainly I haven’t written off the possibility of him still moving to the City Ground just because he’s spoken of being content at his current club.  He’d be a fool to say anything otherwise whilst any potential move is not confirmed - but well, whilst I admire Forest for pursuing their preferred target - if we don’t get him, then we do need to get a striker in.