Forest 0 Crystal Palace 2 – worst Championship season ever?

By: Tim | October 10th, 2008

Kerslake was in charge against an Ireland XI (read Under 21) side last night - another defeat There has been some talk amongst pundits about whether or not a team can take Derby’s unenviable title of ‘worst Premiership season ever’. It’s such an impressive record I think it could be there for a while, however, after Forest’s recent results I’ve been wondering who holds the record for the worst Championship season ever.

I’ve been doing some basic research. Since the Championship began in 2004-05 the worst performance has come from Rotherham – their campaign in 04/05 resulted in 5 wins, 14 draws, 27 losses and a grand total of 29 points. The worst performance in the old Division 2 (with 3 points for a win) came from Cambridge, who gained a meagre 24 points in the 83/84 season.

Could we possibly beat either of these records? It might sound over the top but we’ve played 10 games already – almost a quarter of the season. On that basis, if we get 5 points every 10 games, we will easily break the record for the worst Championship season ever.

Football isn’t that absolute of course. A few months ago I wrote that the beauty of the Championship over the Premiership is that it isn’t predictable, and that three or four wins either way could make the difference between a play-off spot or a relegation battle. I still believe this to be true; however, when your team is consistently outclassed, even while playing at home, it’s hard to find a positive. Right now Forest fans need two positives, one to cancel out the negative, and another one just so we can have a positive.

We’ll get a positive when our attackers return from injury. The last Forest player to score (almost a month ago) was Earnshaw, he is suffering with a hamstring problem at the moment and without his goal scoring threat we look like a weak side on all fronts – can’t score, can’t defend. The truth is, in attack, with Anderson and Garner yet to feature for us, we’ve never quite been full-strength. I can see us banging in a few goals when they’re all fit, obviously the defence is still weak though.

Calderwood, who is currently on a ‘fact-finding’ tour in China (in hiding more like), has at least acknowledged this problem after signing Brighton’s Joel Lynch on a month-long loan. He usually plays at centre-back but can play left-back too, he came straight in to the side for the defeat at Sheffield Wednesday and played fairly well. We’ve also taken 3 Arsenal youngsters, 2 defenders and a midfielder, on a two-game trial. We can only hope that this is a statement of intent from CC – that he intends to shore up the defence by bringing some fresh faces in.

Hopefully CC is using the international break to take stock and re-assess too, while I concede that he has been unlucky with injuries of late, the performances and stats don’t lie. We’re rooted at the bottom of the table, with the second worst goal difference in the league. Against Crystal Palace we looked like a beached whale … way out of our depth. This didn’t escape the attention of the Forest fans, the calls for him to quit are getting louder and louder with each defeat.

My guess is that Doughty will give him at least until Christmas to turn things round, which is probably fair – as far as recent Forest managers go he’s not been that bad after all, certainly better than David Platt or Gary Megson. Who knows though? Maybe he’ll return from China with a renewed, Zen-like confidence – a new defender wouldn’t go amiss either.