Man City v Derby - it's the same team

[Bridgford Boy]

Ten of the players who started the game yesterday also started away at Man City in the cup. Rejigging the positions, with Joe Heath in and Matt Thornhill on the bench was the only difference in the starting personnel.

In the space of a few short weeks, those world beaters have become relegation favourites.

You have to ask the question "what's changed?". How has the sweet, fast passing and joie de vivre been replaced by lumping the ball forward into the channels? There seems only one possible answer: Billy Davies.

Billy says the club is rotten to the core and needs wholesale changes, with most of the players to be given their marching orders come the summer. Yet surely this isn't right. We all saw the good football being played in the early part of the season. While the team wasn't quite good enough, it looked then as if just a few tweaks would be enough to turn things around and go on the march.

What's odd is that Davies' reputation is as a coach. He's known to be poor in the transfer market. Surely he was brought in to coach the youngsters to give them that bit extra, yet he looks to be doing his best to demoralize and confuse them.

Do we want to build well on the foundations we have or do we want to dismantle them and start again? It seems to me that Billy will throw the baby out with the bathwater? Release these players and who knows what cloggers are going to be brought in. Is it right to ditch a squad of talented youngsters who we know can play football the right way, or might it be better to bin off the manager before he does any more damage. The rumours of boardroom malcontent point to that anyway, but surely the time is coming for Pembo to take charge again, this time on a permanent basis.

Pembo in - Davies out!

 

[sedgred]

Ten of the players who started the game yesterday also started away at Man City in the cup. Rejigging the positions, with Joe Heath in and Matt Thornhill on the bench was the only difference in the starting personnel.

In the space of a few short weeks, those world beaters have become relegation favourites.

You have to ask the question "what's changed?". How has the sweet, fast passing and joie de vivre been replaced by lumping the ball forward into the channels? There seems only one possible answer: Billy Davies.

Billy says the club is rotten to the core and needs wholesale changes, with most of the players to be given their marching orders come the summer. Yet surely this isn't right. We all saw the good football being played in the early part of the season. While the team wasn't quite good enough, it looked then as if just a few tweaks would be enough to turn things around and go on the march.

What's odd is that Davies' reputation is as a coach. He's known to be poor in the transfer market. Surely he was brought in to coach the youngsters to give them that bit extra, yet he looks to be doing his best to demoralize and confuse them.

Do we want to build well on the foundations we have or do we want to dismantle them and start again? It seems to me that Billy will throw the baby out with the bathwater? Release these players and who knows what cloggers are going to be brought in. Is it right to ditch a squad of talented youngsters who we know can play football the right way, or might it be better to bin off the manager before he does any more damage. The rumours of boardroom malcontent point to that anyway, but surely the time is coming for Pembo to take charge again, this time on a permanent basis.

Pembo in - Davies out!

That is so hard to argue against and very frightening, think I need a drink after reading that. I have never contemplated the thoughts behind this post. Whilst I would like to congratulate you, on an excellent post, I am not going to because you have just frightened the life out of me

 

[jasons-pineapple]

The same team / squad that went into the city game with 24 points from 26 games in the league

 

[clusternakker]

Ok, we aren't Brazil, but i seem to remember a few decades ago after a poor world cup, the brazil team at the next world cup was one that kicked lumps out of players and were dirty and ultimately failed, It only lasted 1 world cup and then they returnmed to the traditional Brazil everyone knows. Maybe Forest are like Brazil and our traditions shouldnt be messed with!

 

[xbaz]

Completely agree.

I felt, before Christmas that we were a few experienced players short (a big ugly centre-forward and a big ugly centre-half, plus some cover elsewhere). That would be enough for survival this season and stand us in good stead for mid-table or better next season (as the kids gain experience).

But to listen to Billy this is a club that is rotten to the core. Ship the kids out as they're not good enough and replace them with "experience" (for which read over-the-hill journeymen - Dele f***ing Adebola) and sod the pretty football.

 

[Darth Pierre]

Ten of the players who started the game yesterday also started away at Man City in the cup. Rejigging the positions, with Joe Heath in and Matt Thornhill on the bench was the only difference in the starting personnel.

In the space of a few short weeks, those world beaters have become relegation favourites.

You have to ask the question "what's changed?". How has the sweet, fast passing and joie de vivre been replaced by lumping the ball forward into the channels? There seems only one possible answer: Billy Davies.

Billy says the club is rotten to the core and needs wholesale changes, with most of the players to be given their marching orders come the summer. Yet surely this isn't right. We all saw the good football being played in the early part of the season. While the team wasn't quite good enough, it looked then as if just a few tweaks would be enough to turn things around and go on the march.

What's odd is that Davies' reputation is as a coach. He's known to be poor in the transfer market. Surely he was brought in to coach the youngsters to give them that bit extra, yet he looks to be doing his best to demoralize and confuse them.

Do we want to build well on the foundations we have or do we want to dismantle them and start again? It seems to me that Billy will throw the baby out with the bathwater? Release these players and who knows what cloggers are going to be brought in. Is it right to ditch a squad of talented youngsters who we know can play football the right way, or might it be better to bin off the manager before he does any more damage. The rumours of boardroom malcontent point to that anyway, but surely the time is coming for Pembo to take charge again, this time on a permanent basis.

Pembo in - Davies out!

possibly the greatest and most eye opening post that has ever existed on this forum.

john pemberton and the other academy staff has brought up these kids teaching them to play the right way their whole life.

in comes davies and.....BAM......scramble for it lads.

its like sam allardyice going to man utd

 

[winnits]

Come on, you know the answer to this - it's Paul Smith's fault!

 

[gazzaw]

Well I suppose the leveller is this. What had those players done before we faced Man City?

Were we not entrenched in the bottom 3?

We went into the City game on the back of our manager being sacked following one of the worst displays at the CG in years against Donny using primarily the same group of players.

It's easy to single out one game & ask where has it all gone wrong since. If we played that same Man City team every week we would lose 99 out of 100.

Billy is an easy target at the minute but surely the players have to take some responsibility for their actions in recent games.

Will people also stop saying that he is going to sell all of the youngsters we have. He has never said this at all. He has said that that he needs to fully overhaul the team in the summer & he is right, he does. We have no chance of challenging with the squad we have, we didn't in the summer & we don't now.

The young players will go back to learning their trade in the reserves & when they are ready they will figure in the 1st team squad

So take all the kids out of the team who are out of their depth & logic tells you we need to bring in 6-7 players with experience at this level.

Billy has been here 8 weeks or so, to blame him for the clubs plight is very short sighted in my opinion, lets leave the man to get on with the job & at least have the good grace to admit that we don't know what is going on behind the scenes to bring players in.

Lets stop reading between the lines of what we read in the piece of crap that is the Evening Post & get behind the lads until the end of season. They need us, let's not let them down.

 

[gazzaw]

possibly the greatest and most eye opening post that has ever existed on this forum.

john pemberton and the other academy staff has brought up these kids teaching them to play the right way their whole life.

in comes davies and.....BAM......scramble for it lads.

its like sam allardyice going to man utd

Like Father, like Son :nowink:

Your second line made me laugh though. Picture the scene, Mrs McGugan has just given birth to Lewis, in walks Pembo & snatches Lewis from his mothers arms, "Don't worry Mrs McGugan" says Pembo "We're going to teach him to play right for his whole life"

 

[xbaz]

billy effectively said we won't get a point against any side in the top half of the table. yet i remember being really proud that we matched reading - you couldn't tell which was the ex-premiership side and which was the ex-league one side. .

i agree we need extra players and i don't know the facts as to why we didn't get any. but it worries me that the players we have, that we are relying on till we get these extra bodies, are going backwards. lewis can't hit a five yard pass, perchio's positioning is all wrong, garner maybe did very little during a game but still scored five goals from nowhere - i can't imagine him scoring another this season.

and until these replacements arrive we need those players wanting to play for the manager.

 

[Bridgford Boy]

The same team / squad that went into the city game with 24 points from 26 games in the league

Wasn't saying it was all sweetness and light earlier, but there was a lot of promise and the team didn't seem far off. As someone says lower down, against a top club like Reading we didn't look out of our depth. We do now - I don't know many people who expect anything other than a hammering at the weekend, including (apparently) Billy Davies. Him telling the players we can't compete just seems the wrong approach.

 

[gazzaw]

The problem is, Baz, after a manager who told us nowt we now have information overload & tend to read too much into what BD does tell us. I agree, you could deduce from his interviews that we don't stand much chance against the top teams in the division & statistics prove that. We haven't beaten any of them.

What hurts me most of all as a Forest fan is the way we all descend into civil war against each other every other week when surely we all need to be getting behind the team & doing our 'bit' so to speak.

How many of us said after promotion that all we wanted this year was to stay up?

We're in the CCC, we're not in the bottom 3, we can survive this season & kick on

Now lets play a part in making it happen

YOU REDS!

 

[Capital1Red]

Different management :dry: lack of experience as the gaffa would say :blush:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/nottm_forest/7898745.stm

How did we meet man city then if that statement is true?

whose actual fault is it then?

 

[matt1982]

I see some of the points the thread creator is making, but I think the Man City result could have been, and probably was, just a one off. City were in a mess themselves, no leadership, and a shambles defensively, and we probably just took advantage of that on the day - the magic of the cup itself. It would be interesting to have seen how Pemberton would be doing if he was still in charge, but I somehow feel we would still have lost at Cardiff, Birmingham and probably Ipswich, given that, since pemberton had his 2 games, we then lost earnshaw and anderson (our probably 2 most important creative, attacking players), so making things all the more difficult.

I will say though i do not want to see hoofball football, and certainly dont think its right for OUR group of players, wont bring the best out of them - if its billy's idea to 'win ugly' to get results, he first needs the players to do that, and Forest dont have those type of players (nor do we necessarily want them, although yes we do want more experienced championship players, we still want them to be able to play football). He has kept going on about the 'square passes' and the naivety etc, but we dont want the other extreme of that, just lumping it forward to noone in particular - especially one 5ft nothing in striker, and or Tyson who is not that great in the air either.

 

[Gary]

YOU REDS!

Thats the first time anyones said that since I've been checking the forum yesterday evening. ;D

YOU REDS!!

 

[gazzaw]

Thats the first time anyones said that since I've been checking the forum yesterday evening. ;D

YOU REDS!!

COME ON YOU REDS!!

 

[T.B.T.]

It hits hard and it hurts doesn't it?

I can only put it down to a couple of things.......confidence, a positive attitude and pressure.

The first two of which were present when we played Man City and have been sadly missing of late and the latter vice versa.

 

[WatnallRed]

Agreed i want john pemberton!

 

[gazzaw]

Agreed i want john pemberton!

What, like so you & him can make babies??

 

[ared59]

In my over 40 years supporting forest I have been through 5 relegations, 4 from the top flight and 1 from the championship. each time we went down playing football. This time we are going down, as surely we will, hoofing the ball long distances into space. In all those years the one thing Forest stood for was good attractive football. Davies is not a Forest man, he never will be. Forest supporters will accept a team giving their all trying to play football but watch the numbers dwindle if we have to watch football the "Davies Way"

 

[oracle]

In my over 40 years supporting forest I have been through 5 relegations, 4 from the top flight and 1 from the championship. each time we went down playing football. This time we are going down, as surely we will, hoofing the ball long distances into space. In all those years the one thing Forest stood for was good attractive football. Davies is not a Forest man, he never will be. Forest supporters will accept a team giving their all trying to play football but watch the numbers dwindle if we have to watch football the "Davies Way"

That is the saddest thing about this whole episode. Nothing has been learnt from the Megson saga. It shocks me that Doughty and Arthur don't understand that Forest fans are generally a patient bunch IF the side is trying to play a bit of good footie. Look how long Calderwood was given this season before the tide turned. Much of the patience shown was due to him being a decent bloke, but a lot of it was also down to the fact that he was bringing through a bunch of talented kids, playing the Forest way. It made you feel that, although results were not great, we were building something in the medium to long term that could eventually give us what we all want.

I am a case in point. I would much rather see us finish 11th in this league playing good and entertaining football than finish 7th or 8th playing the out dated, short termist dross I feel we are heading for.

Davies is really starting to scare me. His comments are those of an egotistical, self obsessed bully. I'll hold my hands up, I didn't want him but I knew I had to give him a chance and back the team etc, but we appear to be in a self destructive spiral and he has without
doubt played his part in this. Each defeat, he appears afterwards and essentially explains how it has nothing to do with him, he has a great record blah blah. Billy, it's not about you, it's about this football club. The Derby fans I know warned us and crikey they were right.

What happens now? Without doubt we need some unity, he needs to galvanise the team and encourage the kids. I really feel that the next 2 games could seal our fate. A heartless display at Reading and a good stuffing would accelerate our downward spiral. Saturday really hurt......not just because it was Derby but because our prospects now appear bleak. Under CC I felt that if we stayed up (yes, granted a huge if), next season was full of promise. Now next season, whatever league we are in, I just can't feel optimistic.

He might still prove to be a great Manager for us, but at the moment the Davies swingometer is heading towards the Gary Megson zone.

 

[matt1988]

Ten of the players who started the game yesterday also started away at Man City in the cup. Rejigging the positions, with Joe Heath in and Matt Thornhill on the bench was the only difference in the starting personnel.

In the space of a few short weeks, those world beaters have become relegation favourites.

You have to ask the question "what's changed?". How has the sweet, fast passing and joie de vivre been replaced by lumping the ball forward into the channels? There seems only one possible answer: Billy Davies.

Billy says the club is rotten to the core and needs wholesale changes, with most of the players to be given their marching orders come the summer. Yet surely this isn't right. We all saw the good football being played in the early part of the season. While the team wasn't quite good enough, it looked then as if just a few tweaks would be enough to turn things around and go on the march.

What's odd is that Davies' reputation is as a coach. He's known to be poor in the transfer market. Surely he was brought in to coach the youngsters to give them that bit extra, yet he looks to be doing his best to demoralize and confuse them.

Do we want to build well on the foundations we have or do we want to dismantle them and start again? It seems to me that Billy will throw the baby out with the bathwater? Release these players and who knows what cloggers are going to be brought in. Is it right to ditch a squad of talented youngsters who we know can play football the right way, or might it be better to bin off the manager before he does any more damage. The rumours of boardroom malcontent point to that anyway, but surely the time is coming for Pembo to take charge again, this time on a permanent basis.

Pembo in - Davies out!

Great post, exactly what I've been thinking. There is clearly ability in the squad. With the right coaching, the right tactics, the right motivation, these players are more than capable of getting us to safety. Yes, Man City was a one-off cup tie, and the result perhaps just a cup shock, but the talent was there for all to see. The likes of Thornhill, McGugan, Cohen, Anderson have all shown great promise this season and must be kept at the football club. Tyson has been fantastic, Earnshaw has scored goals whenever he has played in the past couple of months.

As we are all too aware, the defence has been the problem, the back 5 as a unit. Whether it has been indiviually, or as a unit, the defence has struggled all season. This will need to be changed in the summer, especially if we manage to stay up. But there is enough there to see us through surely? They kept out Man City's attack so they must have something about them.

I think with the squad we currently have, undoubtedly the best way to 'defend' is to keep the ball. If we have it, they don't, and it certainly relieves pressure from the defence. We have the players to do this, to play the ball through the midfield. Rather than pumping hopeless balls forward and inviting pressure, surely it is better to keep hold. The opposition cannot hurt you without the ball.

In conclusion, the squad should be good enough to keep us up, and a total overhaul of the squad in the summer is not necessary! Add to the talent yes, a new defence yes, but a complete overhaul no.

 

[Kilburn Red]

Sorry if I'm pis*ing on a few bowls of cornflakes here, but.....

Forest fans really are deluded.

I don't recall any decent football being played in the past 4/5 years. Those days are gone, Nigel saw to that.

The young kids we talk about at Forest are not World beaters and never will be.

Season after season of underinvestment coupled with selling assets (When we had some ) has shaped the poor small team of players now on our books.

They we not good enough for the third flight remember! Only a points deduction for another club allowed Forest to escape that dire league.

This whole myth that Forest are a footballing side should be put to bed once and for all. Its a results business. Does anybody really care whether it took 4 passes or 24 to score a goal?? Would you celebrate it any different?

Billy Davies has been bought in to do a job. He has quickly identified what we all knew. The squad is poor. There will always be the odd freak result (Man C) but ultimately the table does not lie.

The key to the whole jigsaw though is Doughty playing ball and allowing Davies to do what he did at Direby & Preston. If Doughty is not interested in success then we may as well pull the shutters down now. But Doughty did employ him so perhaps he is ready to open the cheque book??

It seems to me they took a huge gamble in side stepping the January transfer window thinking that the squad would see them through to safety and then the plan to totally rebuild would have been in place for this summer. Its a massive gamble because if we drop through that trap door again the loss in income will be 8/9 million and Christ knows how many Forest fans will walk away for good?? I know of 7 in Main Stand A-block alone and I only know 7 people in Main Stand A-Block!!

 

[voice of truth]

Sorry if I'm pis*ing on a few bowls of cornflakes here, but.....

Forest fans really are deluded.
I agree, they seem to expect us to be winning european cups every other season, and see anything alse as failure, namely you

I don't recall any decent football being played in the past 4/5 years.
Then get yourself checked for amnesia, or if your standards are oh so high, go and support barcelona. It would at least rid us of your negativity.
Those days are gone, Nigel saw to that.
I will respond only to say that this deserves not to be dignified with a response

The young kids we talk about at Forest are not World beaters and never will be.
Not with that attitude.
Season after season of underinvestment coupled with selling assets (When we had some ) has shaped the poor small team of players now on our books.

They we not good enough for the third flight remember! Only a points deduction for another club allowed Forest to escape that dire league.

This whole myth that Forest are a footballing side should be put to bed once and for all. Its a results business. Does anybody really care whether it took 4 passes or 24 to score a goal?? Would you celebrate it any different?

Billy Davies has been bought in to do a job. He has quickly identified what we all knew. The squad is poor. There will always be the odd freak result (Man C) but ultimately the table does not lie.
By which you mean excellent performance and well-deserved win?
The key to the whole jigsaw though is Doughty playing ball and allowing Davies to do what he did at Direby & Preston. If Doughty is not interested in success then we may as well pull the shutters down now. But Doughty did employ him so perhaps he is ready to open the cheque book??

It seems to me they took a huge gamble in side stepping the January transfer window thinking that the squad would see them through to safety and then the plan to totally rebuild would have been in place for this summer. Its a massive gamble because if we drop through that trap door again the loss in income will be 8/9 million and Christ knows how many Forest fans will walk away for good?? I know of 7 in Main Stand A-block alone and I only know 7 people in Main Stand A-Block!!

 

[Kilburn Red]

Go back to your direby town forum ....