Forest Boffin

 Perhaps a leading factor in the disappointment felt by Forest fans this season has not been results alone, but also the feeling that we have the best squad of players in recent times. This got me pondering what the best Forest XI would be, since our promotion to The Championship in 2008 - how many of the current players would be in it? This is, of course, a subjective issue. As football is a results business, I thought it interesting to look at some win ratios*, and have picked a team based purely on that. How does our team of winners compare to the players we have seen week-in week-out in 2014/15? We can see straight away there are some surprises in our team of winners ( see right, click to enlarge ). The defence is almost as expected - I have included Chris Cohen at left-back because I wanted to recreate a balanced team rather than shove the best win ratios onto the pitch haphazardly. I don't think many would argue about the inclusion of Lee Camp, J...

"The only way to come out of the embargo is to get promotion to The Premier League – so it gives us a fantastic target going forward.” …so said Stuart Pearce in his usual honest and (perhaps too) revealing style. After a fantastic start, Pearce’s men have run into problems. Be it injuries to key players, a confidence crisis – or even the possibility that they were overachieving in the first place, a huge dip in form has led to the first murmurings of discontent since Psycho’ s return. Pearce's minority of detractors have been saying he's not the man to lead Forest back to The Premier League for a while to be fair, and already claim promotion this season has slipped away – despite only being 21 games into the season. Even when speaking to many believers, there is a sentiment that The Reds probably won't go up first time, that this was always going to be a rebuilding season and Pearce, club legend that he is, needs – no, deserves – time. Pearce himself, ho...

As we enter into the January transfer window, I thought it might be a good time to review the players' vital statistics to see what they tell us about the team's performance. Forest have had a mixed season defensively due to tactical issues, but overall the defence has done well; none more so than Karl Darlow. The Forest 'keeper is relatively young and inexperienced - for a promotion-hunting side it was risky to go with Darlow this season, however he has not let us down, and the stats prove, if nothing else, that playing so young a player in this key position has not damaged our goals conceded column - of all the league's goalies, Darlow has let in the fifth least average amount of goals so far. Obviously, since he's played every minute of Forest's season, this primarily reflects the whole team's defending, but he is the biggest brick in the wall, and if he crumbles the whole structure collapses. He has not. Billy Davies has not been able to name as se...

After the fans had gone home from another disappointing result at The City Ground , as I mentioned in my last article, Billy Davies claimed that there wasn't that much wrong, that our problems lay in one area alone; clinical finishing. I didn't agree 100%, so have been looking into this in more detail. A major branch of Davies' argument was that Forest are creating chances, and if true, then logically it must lead us to the conclusion that the team and tactics are capable of getting the goals to win games. Anyone there against Ipswich will remember us creating these chances, but just how many do Forest create? If we look at the amount of attempts on goal ( see left ), for all the teams in the division, we can see that The Garibaldi more than hold their own. Davies' side has been creative enough to have 290 attempts on goal so far this season - the 4th most in the league. 14.5 attempts on goal, on average, is more than enough to find the net - it tends to suggest ...

A recurring bone of contention since Billy Davies returned to Forest has been anxiety over the quality of our strikers; you will often hear fans musing that what Forest need is a 20 goal a season goal-scorer – it is apparent that Davies himself has been attempting to bring such a player in. Simon Cox in particular has been under pressure concerning the amount of goals he scores at Forest – and at first glance, neither he nor Henderson (Forest’s only two real options up front) score enough goals – they are on 5 goals each after 19 league games – in comparison, Ross McCormack has netted 15 already for Leeds United. However, McCormack has been on the pitch for each one of the 1811 minutes of Leeds’ season so far. As far as goals scored are concerned, a fairer reflection is gained when we ask how long does it take, on average, a player to score a goal when they are on the pitch? Looking at the stats for The Championship’s forwards, McCormack still has the best goal-scoring record – h...

With Forest stringing together 6 unbeaten games in the league, there have been questions of whether the international break has come at the wrong time. I began this article with a perception that international breaks tend to hinder The Reds , and that we have to almost start again afterwards. Is this the case? It has long been an opinion of mine that our opposition see Forest as one of the teams to beat, and so scout us closely and adjust their tactics to nullify ours - therefore we 'get found out' more than most teams, because we are seen as dangerous opponents and face a high level of scrutiny. This ties into my thoughts on the international break because our subsequent opponents have all had an extra two weeks to study and plot against us. Our approaching opponents, Bournemouth, Yeovil & Blackpool will all have spent many hours watching videos of The Garibaldi searching for ways to stop us. This is exactly what happened to Forest towards the end of last season; Bil...