Season round-up

By: Tim | August 3rd, 2009

Sloth from the Goon ... sorry ... Earnshaw sports the new look Forest shirt First of all, folks, an apology. I haven’t written anything about the mighty Reds in a long old time, in fairness I have a legitimate excuse as my PC has been out of action for a while with a virus. That and I’ve been on holiday. Anyway, better late than never, and despite all the recent transfer activity, along with the fact that pre-season is already over, I bring you the season round-up…

We may as well get these out of the way first … season lows. Obviously these are open to debate, but personally I think the Boxing Day loss to Doncaster has to be vying for top spot. At the time Doncaster hadn’t scored more than once in any game, and were rooted to the bottom of the table on eighteen points. The fact that this 4-2 defeat, at the City Ground no less, gave Doncaster a platform to gain twenty-five points from their next ten games, and eventually finish above us in fourteenth place, makes the defeat even harder to bear.

Still, the upside was that it finally gave the Board the impetus to hand Calderwood his P45 and show him the door marked ‘do one’. So, a low point cushioned by an eventual high point – in the appointment of Billy Davies that is. It’s safe to say that he wasn’t the popular choice, but he’s definitely won a few critics round with his straight talking and no-nonsense approach. Every fan is looking forward to next Saturday’s game at Reading, after a full pre-season under Billy, which saw some decent results, I think it’s safe to say that we’re expecting a much stronger showing this season.

Back to low points though, obviously the two defeats to Derby have to enter the competition, and the two hammerings by Wolves and Burnley as well. I think the utter capitulation to Burnley was probably the worst defeat of the season, however, not least because of the manner of the goals, but the fact that Burnley, as Peter Taylor might have put it, weren’t even playing that well. It’s perhaps not a low point, but Andrew ‘Andy’ Cole’s failure to make an impression was disappointing too.

To season highs then, obviously staying up was the highest priority for last year, we can be justifiably proud of achieving it too, given the position we were in around Christmas time. Beating Manchester City 3-0 at Eastlands was priceless, as was Joe Garner’s goal against Southampton at St Mary’s (his goal against them at the City Ground wasn’t bad either – shades of Fernando Torres anyone?).

Chris Cohen was continually energetic, and well worth his player of the season award, and Wes Morgan stepped up his game too. Earnshaw has got to get a mention, as last season’s top scorer with twelve league goals (seventeen in total), it’s a shame he was injured for half the season really.

Still, we’ve got plenty of firepower in reserve this year, considering how active we’ve been in the transfer market over the past few months. With that in mind, watch out for the pre-season round-up…