Face it Forest Fans...............

You are simply not good enough.

And yet you have the best and most costly squad in the Championship. Billy is a relatively successful manager, very good tactically and very experienced. You should be at the top of the league. He is the most blessed of all managers with the size, cost and quality of his squad. And yet ………… There you are just hanging on to a play-off place and even Derby with its NLN assembled squad, are steadily getting away from you. There has to be something wrong!

The reason you are not at the top should be obvious to both Forest and Derby above all clubs given our recent. It is the manager stupid! The history points the way very clearly. Professional footballers are hard wired to give of the utmost at all times and to be totally competitive. But really successful managers have the ability to get the very last ounce of effort from their players. There’s no better example than a manager we both had in recent history. Brian Clough did it for Derby and then even more spectacularly for Forest. He brought about Forest’s most illustrious period ever in their history. Not with such an expensive squad but just by inspiring more or less ordinary players to play like world-beaters. And even more recently but never in such a sublime way, Steve McLaren is doing it again at Derby, taking Nigel Clough’s modestly assembled team, adding a few crucial new members and then getting them to put in that extra yard of endeavour for him and the team. Somehow his players just give that little bit extra.

You have to accept that somehow, Billy can’t quite get the same response and that’s down to what? In my opinion, it’s down to him being only for himself, but you fans can answer the question any way you like. However - for some reason – he cannot just do it.