Well, like the last hour on the Titanic, key players are jumping ship. If Setanta Sports are to be believed Junior is finally Agogo-ing to Egyptian side Zamalek for a measly £565,000. Commons has already moved down the A52 on a Bosman (call yourself a Forest fan, Kris?), and Sammy ‘the Northern Irish Beckham’ Clingan has been allowed to leave on a free too (sound business acumen if ever there was any).

According to the Evening Post there is ‘a sense of looming panic beginning to grow among supporters’, I don’t think this is strictly true though, there is reason to hope. Earnshaw is a proven Championship goal scorer, and Paul Anderson (signed on a season-long loan from Liverpool) comes very highly rated by the Swansea faithful.

Guy Moussi, signed for £300,000 from French Ligue 2 side SCO Angers, is an interesting addition as well. He’s still an unknown quantity in this country, but if Friio is proved right he’ll be the sort of player that Clingan never quite was: “Guy is a central midfielder who can play either in the holding role or as a box-to-box player. He’s very powerful with the ball but for a big lad he’s good technically”. Early signs of him in action are promising.

At the moment Forest are being linked to a hatful of other strikers and midfielders too. Top of the list, according to one bastion of high quality journalism, is Andy Goal – CC is keen to use his experience for this campaign and a possible player/coach role has been mooted. Other rumours include a renewed bid for Leon Best, as well as bids for Carlisle’s Joe Garner and Leicester City’s captain Stephen Clemence.

All this leads to one question, though, where’s the defence at Colin? Creativity and firepower is great, and exactly what Forest need, but we can only hope that CC is looking at the bigger picture. If Forest are going to survive this season, hell, if we’re going to push for promotion, we need at least one or two more decent defenders. Big Wes ain’t gonna cut it I’m afraid.

Anyway, that gripe aside, there are signs of life at the City Ground at last. It’s fair to say that CC still needs to win a few fans over, but confidence might be restored with a couple of good quality signings in the right place … doing the double over Derby wouldn’t go amiss too.

His name is Gareth McCleary, and he was bought for peanuts from Bromley, where he was held in high regard by the club and their fans.

Initially I didn’t get too excited about this, he was playing non-league football after all, but then he scored what was described as a ’sensational’ goal on his debut for our reserves.

Then Colin Calderwood starts singing his praises, even hinting that he might be on the bench before our game against Carlisle fell victim to the ‘big freeze’. I decided I needed to see if this boy is really worth the hype, and so went on YouTube hoping to maybe find a video of him in action.

It turns out there were quite a few, and yes, he looks rather good! Unfortunately the user seems to have removed most of them, so I’ll just leave you with this one……..

Colin Calderwood said at the start of the transfer window that he intened to make new signings in time for the Orient encounter, but so far rumours have failed to develop into fact.

Neil Danns is one player that Calderwood has trailed since the summer, but the Birmingham midfielder has opted to join Crystal Palace, while Dave Edwards of cash-strapped Luton Town looks set for Wolves.

That leaves Leon Best, a Nottingham-born striker with bags of potential who currently plays for Coventry City. But despite the Sky Blues’ own financial problems, they are reluctant to let him go. Forest have made an increased bid, thought to be around £600,000, but Calderwood has insisted that he won’t be held to ransom.

December and January are typically difficult months for Forest. Last Christmas the seven point lead at the top of League One was undone, and then several key players moved on during the transfer window, leaving behind a depleated squad. Hopefully the players can make the 2-1 win over Huddersfield a turning point and push their way back into the top two.

As for tomorrow’s game, it’s a difficult one to predict, especially since Calderwood may be forced to play moody Grant Holt, or even the mis-firing Scott Dobie. Perhaps this will be a chance for him to finally make his mark in the garibaldi.

Wingers Kris Commons and Arron Davies were left on the bench for the game and Forest clearly lacked pace and width. Calvin Andrew scored the only goal of the game to give Luton their second win over Forest in a matter of weeks at Kenilworth Road. The defeat means that Forest won’t be hosting Liverpool in a glamourous third round tie next month. It would have been the first time the two clubs have met in the competition since the rearranged semi-final of 1989, following the Hillsborough disaster.

Forest reached the fourth round of the FA Cup last season after comfortably beating Premiership strugglers Charlton Athletic at the City Ground, only then to be swept aside by eventual winners Chelsea. However, the club’s promotion campaign disintegrated and they lsot out in the play-offs to Yeovil.

Calderwood is clearly not interested in cups this year. I’m not claiming that he deliberately lost matches, just that he picked weaker teams to avoid injury to his better players. Forest also did well in the Paint Trophy last season but this time round were knocked out early on by Peterborough. Clearly the manager is more focussed on the league now, as he knows that the club and the fans expect nothing less than promotion, and if he fails he will lose his job.

As much as I would have loved to have seen Liverpool come to the City Ground, more than anything I want us to be playing them in the Premiership, so promotion is priority. We picked up too many injuries last season and the squad simply isn’t deep enough to risk losing more this time round.

O.k, it wasn’t live, it was a recorded piece that I had to do for my sports journalism unit. But not being live doesn’t make it much easier! I still had to pick up on all the key moments as and when they happened, as well as recording a match preview, half-time report and full-time report.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with my efforts, and will now be planning future trips to other grounds to build on my experience. Who knows, maybe you will one day hear my voice pop up on Five Live! If I can, I’ll put a clip on here so you can have a listen and tell me what you think.

On to the game, a good straight forward performance from Forest. They did what they needed to do without too much fuss, and they were patient in their attacking play. Kris Commons got his eighth goal of the season ten minutes before half time, and then after the break Nathan Tyson scored a brace to put the game out of Lincoln’s reach. Tyson had the ball in the net four times in all, but a strike in each half was disallowed for offside.

The only real downer for the Reds, apart from Julian Bennett’s first-half injury, was the sloppy manner in which they conceded Lincoln’s consolation goal, which was scored by Jamie Forrester.

Sammy Clingan was my man of the match, he was involved in just about everything and completely bossed the midfield.

Anyway, back to Forest. Today comes the visit of Crewe Alexandra to the City Ground, and while a nice rest will enable the Reds to go into the game feeling fresh, they should be careful not to get complacent. Crewe have won their last four and are unbeaten in six, and will not want to lose that momentum.

Colin Calderwood has Matt Lockwood, Grant Holt and Neil Lennon back in contention, so Forest go into the game looking reasonably strong. Lockwood will be looking to finally shake off the injury problems that have so far blighted his short Forest career, while Holt has made a quick recovery from his recent hernia operation. There were rumours that Lennon’s time at the City Ground was over a few weeks back when he went back to Scotland for family reasons, but he has since returned and reassured fans that he is committed to the club’s promotion fight.

With Holt back from injury, Calderwood has decided to send our promising young striker Emile Sinclair out on loan to Brentford. The big fella has been impressive so far this season but the manager obviously wants him to be playing regular senior football to keep up that good form.

I’m not going to make a prediction for today’s game, but with Carlisle and Leyton Orient both playing away from home, there is a good chance Forest could finish up top of the league by the end of the day.

Lincoln had been hyping up the game since the draw was made, with the prospect of facing Forest being treated the same as facing Manchester United, and Forest fell for it big time. They strolled around the pitch with such arrogance it was as if they believed they were European champions all over again, as if any opponent should feel privelaged to play them.

The Imps are currently bottom of the Football League and haven’t won since August 25th, so to have had to scrape a draw against them is pretty dire. Forest could barely string two passes together today and struggled to create clear cut chances, while the defenders just seemed to want to run into each other.

In fairness, the pitch at Sincil Bank is tiny and about as flat as corrugated iron, making it very difficult for the players to find the space to pass it around. But as professionals they should be able to adapt to these conditions.

Another disappointing note was the behaviour of our travelling fans, or at least the majority of them. I know every club has it’s wankers, but it always makes me feel quite ashamed to see ‘fans’ of my team behave like morons.

Drunken chavs shouting threats at opposing supporters, hardly the greatest ambassadors for the club or the sport. My housemate is a steward at Sincil Bank and said today that the Forest fans at the game were the worst away supporters he’d ever had to deal with.

Anyway, I’m going to stop ranting now, although there may be more if we don’t win the replay at the City Ground.

The Reds always looked dangerous despite the lack of chances and enjoyed the majority of play in the first half, but it took until five minutes before the break for skipper Ian Breckin to level the score with a close range header.

Forest took control in the second half and just a minute after coming on for Arron Davies, Nathan Tyson was sent clear by Chris Cohen before hammering the home side into the lead. Following the goal, Southend’s Peter Clarke was shown the red card for flooring Luke Chambers in an off the ball incident, which also saw Breckin booked for his involvement in the melee that followed.

Taking full advantage of their extra man, Forest went on the hunt for a third goal, and they got it when Junior Agogo curled in a 25 yard shot into the bottom corner. He then wrapped up an impressive win with his second and Forest’s fourth when he headed in a cross from Tyson.

The win moves the Reds up to second, and into the automatic promotion spots for the first time this season, just a point behind leaders Carlisle, who drew away at Luton.

Nathan Tyson looks set to start having capped an impressive substitute performance with his first league goal of the campaign against Tranmere on Saturday. His successful return from injury has meant that Grant Holt finally underwent hernia surgery today.

Colin Calderwood’s troops will be looking to make it seven points out of nine from Forest’s three successive home games, before the side travel up the road to Lincoln for Saturday’s FA Cup tie with the Imps.

The boss should be able to field a fairly strong, attacking team now that he has Tyson, Lewis McGugan and Arron Davies all back from injury, with Davies providing plenty of pace on the right wing to add to that of Kris Commons on the left.

Commons has been named as Powerade Player of the Month for October following some almighty displays, including scoring a hattrick away at Cheltenham. Let’s hope his award can inspire the rest of the team to follow his example.

This afternoon, just four days later and a week after our worst performance since Colin Calderwood took over, we hosted Tranmere Rovers. If this was last season, I would not have been worried about this prospect, but at the moment Tranmere are one of the form sides of the division.

Step up Julian Bennett.

Almost as if Tuesday hadn’t happened, Jules goes from Titus Bramble to Sol Campbell and turns out a man of the match performance. According to Calderwood, he was our main attacking threat despite a good team performance all round, and even had a hand in both goals. I’m sure words must have been said in the dressing room on Tuesday, and it seems this man was paying his full attention.

It’s a positive sign for Forest in what has been an awful week. Our first away defeat of the season followed by the Oldham match, and then the announcement that Neil Lennon has buggered off back to Scotland. So it’s pleasing to see this kind of redemption, also with Nathan Tyson getting back on the goal trail.

I’m not going to start saying that this win and a defeat for Leeds now makes us dead certs for promotion. I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope for a repeat performance against Southend in the week.