Return of Stress...

DECEMBER 29 2019.
FOREST 1 WIGAN CAR PARK 0


Have you ever heard the expression "more than the sum of its parts"? It means if you harness 11 hamsters to a dynamo, you somehow end up with 12 or more hamsters' worth of power. So, "less than the sum of its parts" refers to the same 11 hamsters generating 10 or less hamsters' worth of power. Why these things happen is beyond reason. The "more than" scenario, it has been suggested, is because some of the hamsters are magic, or fuelled by plutonium. Likewise people reckon that the "less than" scenario comes about because at least a couple of the hamsters are in league with Satan.

What I have found most troubling about these expressions is that I don't know which one applies to Forest. You could say that Lamouchi has got more out of this squad than you would expect, at least results-wise, given the players' individual limitations. Or you could say that the side continues to disappoint, performance-wise, given the players' individual qualities.

The game against Wigan Car Park perfectly illustrated this conundrum. For much of the game, 11 Forest hamsters generated about 5 hamsters' worth of power. After a breezy start, just about everything went wrong. The match became a game of "Guess Who's Bottom". Not, you will note, "Guess Whose Bottom", which is another game entirely, but "Guess Who's Bottom", with an apostrophe. For a start, Lamouchi had picked the wrong hamsters, again. Now I understand the argument about resting people, but the squad isn't really good enough to cope without Sam Basso or Tiago Silva or Joe Lolley, and weakening the side on the assumption that they should still overcome bottom-of-the-table opposition is a mistake our manager has made before. Anyway, add to this the fact that players were played out of position, some of them were off form, some of them looked knackered, and we ended up with a right armpit of a performance which would convince a passing neutral that it was the hamsters in red who were struggling to survive. I would say this was a "less than the sum of its parts" performance, were it not for the odd fact that many of the parts didn't work to start with. The Lord High Grabban missed the best chance of the match. Sameobi spent much of his time beating himself. Yates kept shouting at the invisible dog he appeared to be chasing. And poor old Carvalho, stuck out on the wing dreaming of Portugal, dragged his £13 million pound burden after him like a sackful of bad decisions. Perhaps it was a case of being "equal to the sum of its parts", after all.

The defence did okay. They had to, because by the end their protection had melted away and we ended up watching a re-run of Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter's 1976 original, not the crappy remake). Even then, they gave away a penalty and could have conceded another. Wigan, by everyone's measure, were the better side.

And yet Forest won, a result which encouraged the notion that the side was, in the end, more than the sum of its parts. Despite so much going wrong, enough went right to get the three points. The defence, as mentioned before, did ok, and centre back Figure8o scored his second splendid goal of the season. There were just enough decent moves to remind us of better days at the office. The introduction of Silva and Lolley provided some impetus. And then there was Brice Samba, whose penalty save confirmed that he was either magic or fuelled by plutonium or simply the coolest bloke on God's green earth.

I've said it before. There's something about this squad which means that whenever parts go wrong, other parts compensate. Forest is, quite accidentally, more than, less than, and equal to the sum of its parts. All at the same time.