No Billy and Mugged by Charlton

I got back Sunday evening from my ground visits after the disgrace at Derby and all seemed normal. But it wasn't really. Though we didn't know it, Billy was yesterday's man, sacked by Fawaz. It only became apparent on Monday when the training staff didn't turn up at the Academy. This was a bit disturbing because we had a game on Tuesday evening with no one at the helm.

I was one of those who welcomed Billy back to the CG. True, he had a strange manner and anyone who had made his acquaintance warned us off him, but his record in the Championship is pretty good and I felt sure that he had learned a bit of common sense. At first he and Fawaz seemed to get on like a house on fire. But the "unfinished business", which I thought was to get Forest to the Prem, in fact seemed to consist of getting even with all his detractors and ruining the structure at the club purely for his own gratification. Many valuable members of the staff were sacked and the only person remaining seemed to be Jim Price, his friend, agent and solicitor who was awaiting a decision on his future after rumours of malpractice at his legal firm in Scotland.

I slowly began to change my opinion and, all in all, I am not sorry the little man has gone, the last months of his tenure were bizarre to say the least. Refusing to talk to sections of the media finally descended into a refusal to talk to anyone except East Midlands Today. There followed a strange interview which would have been funny except that it was conducted by our manager in all seriousness and not on some comedy sketch show. Then there was the dust up with the photographer at the Den (or Hillsborough; anyway, somewhere!) and the constant moaning about our injury crisis. I agree that key injuries were destabilising for a while because the players were going down like nine-pins, but Billy just kept on and on about it whilst making no attempt to change things, such as getting in loan players.

So we were Billy-less. What to do? Fawaz obviously had Neil Warnock lined up because no sooner was the ink dry on Billy's P45 than Warnock was chatting to Fawaz and had arranged for Lee Peltier to join us from Leeds on loan. So much for loans being impossible to do or taking a long time to arrange.

Then the farce began. Warnock decided that Fawaz is too hands-on (apparently it all blew up because Neil was expounding his thoughts on team selection and Fawaz had an alternative suggestion) and stopped talking and withdrew. Poor Lee Peltier, who by this time had signed, wanted to unsign, but it was too late. He only decided to come here because Warnock had persuaded him to do so. Then it became a sort of managerial musical chairs. One by one the list of possibles began to shrink, Psycho (Stuart Pearce, a legend at the club), Malky McKay, Gianfranco Zola  and some Spanish bloke all got a mention before excusing themselves for various reasons.

In the end Gary Brazil from the Academy became interim manager. With an odd assortment of trainers to assist. With only a few hours to assume command he picked a team that might have been a Billy team, full of the usual faces. The portents were not good. Charlton are near the bottom of the league, though they had won three games in succession before losing their last game to Burnley. However they had not won away since November, whilst Forest had not won at all since early February. Abdoun, Halford and Henderson came in and Paterson, Majewski and Moussi were left out. I arrived at the ground and felt totally discombobulated. The whole thing felt leaderless and unreal, the crowd was sparse and the pre-game ritual on the field was quite different; for one thing there were hardly any training staff in evidence.

The managers change, but the game followed the usual pattern. Forest had the best of the first half, hitting the post twice and having one goal-bound effort cleared off the line. 0-0 at half time. Second half Charlton regrouped, sensed that they could get something from the game and came more into it.  With ten minutes to go came the sucker punch. Lascelles, who had earlier been booked for the tenth time this season leading to a two match ban, pushed a gentle ball forward. The pass was too soft and a Charlton man nipped round the intended recipient, flew towards our goal and fired in a shot. The ball struck the post and oh, so cruelly, spun straight to a Charlton player unmarked just a few yards away from an open goal. Despite my prayers, he scored with ease. In the remaining time we had a couple more chances, but they went wide.

So the run continues even without the wee Scot. The next game is on Saturday away at Ipswich. It is practically a home game for me, twenty minutes through the countryside, car parking near Christchurch Park, a gentle walk down to the ground to see....what? A team showing new manager bounce, Gary Brazil picking a few of the younger players he knows so well or the same old collapse? Tell you one thing I can be sure of, it's never dull at Nottingham Forest!