The table doesn’t lie, now we have to stay focused
Forest’s two-time European Cup winner runs the rule over all the latest City Ground news
NOTTINGHAM Forest are starting to look a good team now.
The owner, Evangelos Marinakis, made money available in the summer and Aitor Karanka has spent it wisely. The manager has brought the right players in.
In the past, we’ve spent money on poor players; players who haven’t done a job for us. But this year, we’ve signed good players, talented players who are willing to work hard.
You’ve got to give credit to the manager for bringing them in and credit to the owner for backing him. Along with the chairman, Nicholas Randall, they are doing a great job.
The club are doing ever so well on the pitch and off it.
The team is full of confidence and when you’ve got confidence you are far, far better.
If you’re short of confidence you worry about making a run or a pass; you think about it, then go ‘I better not’ and just lump it up the pitch.
Instead, everyone will have a bounce in their step and be feeling very chipper.
That’s what going into the international break on the back of a win can do for you. If you go into it after a defeat everyone will be glum for two weeks. Beating Middlesbrough was superb. It was a tremendous result and fantastic to have kept a cleansheet.
The whole team must have been delighted and it will have given them a big boost during the break, especially now being in the play-off places.
But you can’t get too comfortable; you’ve still got to keep doing your job.
The players will have been able to enjoy that win, but then you have to put it to one side and go out there and get another result. They’ve got another game to focus on, against Norwich City on Saturday.
You’ve got to keep doing the things that got you the win at Middlesbrough and which got you into the top six in the first place.
I’m sure Karanka will be doing his best to keep them on their toes.
Norwich are just outside the playoffs at the moment, in ninth, but the table is so tight there’s not much in it. They’ve had some good results and have been playing all right. They put together a good run of wins last month.
But Forest have been playing better. The table tells you that.
If you look at the league table, we are where we are - up in the play-off places - because we are a good team at the minute
If we’re going to stay there, we have to keep doing the right things; do what we did in the last game. Because at the moment, Forest should be delighted with how it’s going.
Middlesbrough hadn’t conceded a goal at home in the league before we played them.
That’s the good thing about Forest this year - we always look like we’ve got a goal in us. We’ve got players
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who look like they will find the back of the net, and it’s nice to see the goals being shared around the team. Pretty much everyone looks like they are capable of scoring – even the centre-halves.
It was letting in goals that had been the problem - but we showed how good we can be defensively against Middlesbrough. We’ve got to play like that more regularly now.
We’ve got good players who are in form, though.
Joe Lolley is bang in form, Lewis Grabban has started to hit his stride and you can’t forget about Daryl Murphy, he always does a job for us when he comes in. Full credit to him for that – he’s not been playing every game, but when he does play, he gives his all and does well.
I’m a big fan of Joao Carvalho, too. He can make things happen. He can make us tick.
And he’s not at his best yet, either. He’s still a young lad and he’s still getting used to the Championship. He will get better.
I’m sure Grabban will be keen to play against Norwich, having spent a couple of years there.
He’ll be desperate to get on the scoresheet as well. You always like to play well against your old clubs.