It’s a funny old game

By: Tim | February 7th, 2009

Watch your crown jewels Robbie... What a difference a week makes. Last Saturday saw our first defeat in five games at Ninian Park, we then failed to make an impression in the transfer market on Monday, and the less said about Wednesday night the better. Sadly I’ll have to say something, but the fact that the decisive blow was landed by Kris Commons has left me feeling like Leslie Ash after her botched lip injections – more than a little bitter.

To transfer deadline day then, and it turns out that Davies might not have been watching Eggert Jonsson in the Edinburgh derby after all, because we made a failed £600,000 bid for the Hibs central defender Rob Jones instead. Hibernian are still hoping to get in to Europe, so the offer tabled wasn’t deemed high enough for their club captain, but according to the NEP he was keen on the move. Jones is useful in the air, due to his height, and could be the subject of a renewed bid in the summer. At 29 he’s no spring chicken though, personally I think we should be looking elsewhere for another centre-back.

There has been a lot of negativity on the NEP website, and on the messageboards, due to our failure to buy anyone in the transfer window – we also made a £400,000 bid for Norwich winger Lee Croft, and made an undisclosed offer for Dele Adebola (Bristol City), both of which were rejected, presumably because both clubs didn’t want to sell to Championship rivals.

Some fans have pointed to the fact that Nigel Doughty is number 36 on the Four Four Two rich list (with a personal fortune of £140m), and could have spared some more cash for new signings. We’ve spent a lot of money this season though, it’s hardly the Chairman’s fault that the likes of Moussi and Earnshaw are injured is it? The fact that he made over £1 million available during the transfer window shows some willingness to buy, and I can understand the Chairman not wanting to pay over the odds for players, something which regularly happens in January, and all too frequently happens to Forest. We can always go down the emergency loan route if needs be, and at least we managed to hold on to some of our better players too.

The growing injury list is obviously a concern though, Perch (who has recently signed a new contract) is the latest casualty – he was stretchered off during the Derby game, fortunately it was due to concussion so he shouldn’t be out for long. He is a doubt for today’s game against QPR, although Garner will return to the side after suspension, and the injury to Earnshaw may not be as bad as expected either, he could return to the side today too.

As Daniel Taylor points out in his match report, the injury list eventually took its toll on Wednesday night; we faded badly and let Derby back in to the game, we even ended up with Big Wes playing as an emergency striker at one point. You can’t blame the players for lack of effort, and things could have turned out differently had Bywater been given a red card instead of a yellow one, but we just didn’t have the squad to compete over 90 minutes. If you’re not feeling demoralised enough already, you can watch the highlights here.

One pleasing thing to come from Wednesday night is Nigel Clough’s refusal to talk to the media, he ducked out of the City Ground without giving an interview, leaving Gary Crosby to claim that ‘he does not want to take any glory from this win’. This is in direct contrast to Commons too, who promptly ran over to the Derby fans to celebrate scoring what turned out to be the winner. And this is a player who always liked to remind us of how he is a boyhood Forest fan. Anyway, the money-spinning tie against United would have been great, but at least we’re free to concentrate on surviving in the Championship, and hopefully building from there.