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...

Perhaps the most unheralded reason for The Championship being so fascinating in 2012/13 has been the cunning and guile of the men in charge: the managers. Forest Boffin would like to take this opportunity to throw a little praise their way for the tactical efforts that have enriched this season in particular. Malky MacKay, Steve Bruce and Ian Holloway have taken the spoils and will be plying their trade in The Premiership next season, but the volatile nature of The Championship has ensured there are far more success stories than these three. Forest's own Billy Davies has scored the second most amount of points per game ( see league table, right ), and from watching Forest we all know how good a job other managers have done in tweaking their tactics to make it difficult for supposed 'better teams'. This is why the division has been so unpredictable - managers have done a great job in closing the gap between ability and making up the numbers. Davies racked up 1.73...

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 ...