Forest Boffin

Last week's surprise 2-0 victory at Ipswich was the first time Philippe Montanier's Forest side have shown a true defensive mentality. If replicated, The Reds' attacking flair should ensure a drastic rise up the table. Ipswich's main strategy was to bombard the penalty area with crosses. They had clearly done their homework as Forest generally concede a lot of goals in this manner due to their poor man-marking and tendency to leave lots of space in dangerous areas. Forest's defenders are noticeably poor in the air, and statistics bear this out; Armand Traore has been our best header of the ball this season – but he's only won 63% of aerial duels. This is poor – 47 Championship defenders have won a greater share of headers.   The centre-backs have fared even worse – Matt Mills and Damien Perquis have won a mere 56% and 55% of headers. They are the joint 77 th and joint 84 th best defenders in the league in the air. Also, at times the Forest goalke...

Forest are still searching for that lovin’ feelin’ at The City Ground after failing to score for only the second time this season against Ipswich. It was a disappointing afternoon for a few reasons, but Mick McCarthy’s men were always going to be difficult to beat. Ipswich included Luke Chambers and David McGoldrick, both of whom have been playing well. “ McGoal-drought,” as some Forest fans labelled him, has been scoring regularly; feeding off the hard work of the Ipswich midfield and strike partner Darryl Murphy as Town have tended to play quite direct during the games I’ve seen. Chambers is in the familiar situation of being played out of position at right-back, which is something Forest perhaps should have capitalised on more. The Reds continued to employ a 4-2-3-1 system, with Nathan Chalobah replacing Gonzalo Jara. The system is probably Billy Davies’ reaction to the problems in defensive midfield; teams were finding too much space in front of Forest’s central defenders,...

After another fantastic win at in-form Sheffield Wednesday, Forest welcome The Tractor Boys to the city ground as expectation is rising faster than blood-pressure in the playoffs. Unlucky Forest are once again up against a resurgent team - another relegation scrapping side who happen to have improved in time for their game against the Garibaldi. There are similarities to be drawn between Billy Davies and Ipswich manager Mick McCarthy, as both have rescued struggling clubs and made them unrecognisable, despite retaining mostly the same players. Like the last fixture, on paper Forest should be beating Ipswich easily, however Forest Boffin suspects it won't be that easy. The Tractor boys have have been deservedly accused of brittleness over the past few years, their old manager Paul Jewell labelling them "mentally weak". They have thrown away leads consistently, crumbling 13 times over the past two seasons after scoring first (compared with Forest's 3 times). They ...