Coventry 2 Forest 2

By: Tim | December 8th, 2008

While our well-deserved point at the Ricoh Arena was enough to keep us off the bottom of the table, bear in mind that this is only down to goal difference. Doncaster’s third 1-0 win of the season meant they went above us on eighteen points, fortunately for us Charlton continued their poor away form when they lost 2-0 to Blackpool, but there’s only one goal between us and the Addicks – our position is about as tenuous as this story in today’s Express.

We’ve clearly got the potential to break out of the relegation zone though. What made the difference at Coventry lay in some dodgy defending on our part – we showed good fighting spirit to come back twice, and played some neat possession football, particularly for the first goal where McGugan played a great through-ball for Cohen to find the head of Earnshaw. Camp played well once again, it’s reassuring to read reports that he might be staying longer than 1st of January, Smudge definitely needs some competition.

We should have won this game really, with great chances going awry for Earnshaw, McCleary and Garner. It’s make or break time for us now, if we’re going to have any chance of survival then we need to start converting these closely fought games in to wins. The following month or so is clearly the time to do it, too, with five of our next six league games coming against sides from the bottom half of the table, including Doncaster, Charlton and Southampton.

Calderwood is as hopeful as I am: ‘What I see excites me and lifts me. If we perform to the same level (as the past two games) for the rest of the season, we will be fine. What we produced was a template – it was the level of performance we need this season. It will be a different test against Sheffield United this week and it will be interesting to see what they produce against them’.

I hope that Calderwood doesn’t upset the balance in order to placate the returning Nathan Tyson though, which he is evidently keen to do. If he does revert to his beloved 4-3-3 for tomorrow night’s match at the City Ground, I think we could end up with egg on our faces, it’ll leave us vulnerable to the counter-attack against a team who currently lie in the play-off places. Yes, the potential is there, now Calderwood has got to get his tactics right and maintain consistency.