The 4-5-1 completely stiffled Forest in the first half and they had barely a sniff. I thought Worthington looked back to his best, snapping in to tackles, belting forward and backwards as required. This 4-5-1 seems to suite us quite well ... althought I think it was more 4-1-4-1 with Holdsworth sitting in front of the defence and with Collins and Worthington in front of him ... I thought it brought the best out of all three.

I thought Forest were unlucky to have a defender sent off as well as conceding the penalty ... full marks to Malvin for his hard work and pace when chasing a lost cause. He gave the Forest defence a lot of problems and its easy to see why he is probably the most fouled player in the division.

In the first 15 minutes of the second half we bossed the game and Forest looked a beaten side. Great chances for Boothy and Schofield and the points should have been wrapped up. When Schofield missed his chance it was the first time I realised he was on the pitch for Worthington. A dirty foul from Commons on Kamara seemed to swing the match in Forests favour. It looked a blatent professional foul to me as Kamara was pulling away bit the ref didn't even book Commons which surprised me. Kamara looked badly injured and limped off a few minutes later....hope its nothing long term.

From that point on for the last 30 minutes or so the momentum swung to Forest. They upped their energy levels as ours seemed to drop and it was no surprise when they equalised (and then went on to win) ... it looked as though they had 11 and we had 10. When Kamara, and later Jeavons, went off we seemed to loose our shape and heads. If Worthington had been there to steady the ship, or Walwork, we would have come home with at least a point and probably all three. We badly lost direction and leadership in the last 30 minutes and it was a sour feeling to loose a match we turned up expecting to loose, performed enough in most part to win, but eventually lost.

Williams and Jeavons combined well on the left. I've not seen either before. Jeavons played intelligently. Both Jeavons and Williams looked rusty. Williams likes to take a risk with a pass rather than play the easy ball. He was very unlucky to see a great strike come back off the post. If people never saw Jimmy Nicholson play ... he used to hit 2 or 3 like that every match!

It could have been a great tactical victory, but messed up by lack of leadership and experience in the last 30 minutes (and that woeful tackle on Kamara). There were some good signs in that we didn't look second best in comparison to high spending Forest (I was very surprised that they also only played one up front for most of the game).

By Richard Holt from the HTFC mailing list.