Well, that was weird, wasn't it? And a bit wonderful too.
After seven minutes, when Captain Kenna went off, Forest's proud home record seemed in real danger. With Earnie, Wilson and McKenna gone, we were left with what looked ominously like the dusty skeleton of a bygone side - Chambers, Morgan, Moussi, McGoogle, Anderson, Cohen ... it made you shudder a bit. No surprise then, with such an oddball collection of bones old and new, that Forest's performance was a bit of a mish mash.
To be quite honest, no one individual, apart perhaps from Gunter, had a consistently good game. Dex fought like a Trojan as usual, but he ended up flicking the preponderance of long balls to nobody in particular. Boyd did one or two startlingly good things, but found the high-speed ping pong increasingly bewildering. McGoogle was good in very small parts, but spent too much time locked in some hazy daydream. Moose was incredibly hit and miss: important destructive work was cancelled out by some thoroughly cockeyed distribution. Cohen was okay at left back, but you could almost feel his eagerness to drive into midfield and exert some influence on the game. Chambers defended well until his brain popped; Morgan played stoutly but was unsettled on one or two occasions by the bulldozer Kuqi into looking alarmingly awkward. Both centre backs were guilty of some dispiritingly wayward long balls. Raddy and Anderson looked dangerous at times but tired noticeably. And so on and so on. The midfield went missing too often, leaving a gaping hole for people like the Divine Pratley to surge into. All in all, Forest looked like a team operating on six or seven different wavelengths, which is not surprising at all.
The weird and wonderful thing is that, despite looking at times like a group of complete strangers, Forest won. No, that's not exactly it. It's that we were not, as so many have said, lucky to win. We deserved to win. You may find this difficult to stomach, but that's because you're looking at it the wrong way, or you're dim, or something.
We were NOT lucky to get away with that penalty decision. Despite what "reasonable" people say, despite what Billy said, it was not a penalty. If there was any contact on the Divine Pratley at all, it was minimal, and certainly not enough to bring him down. If he had been pushed, he would have staggered. If he had been clipped, he would have sprawled sideways. He did neither of these things. He simply dropped to his knees in a poorly fabricated attempt to con the referee. I had a few words with God about this, and God confirmed my suspicions. He said that Pratley dived, as he had dived before, and intended to dive as soon as he broke into the penalty area. He felt Cohen's breath on his back, and went down. There was no reason he couldn't shoot, but he bottled it. That is the truth of the matter, and God should know. Consider how enraged you would have been if it had been given. The cries of "Cheat!" would have been deafening.
Forest deserved to win because they never let their own shortcomings overwhelm them. Unlike Swansea, who moaned childishly from start to finish, and beyond, Forest just got on with the job. They reminded us just what a gritty bunch of characters they can be, and how bloody minded they are becoming in their defence of a proud home record.
Forest deserved to win because, throughout a match which ebbed and flowed, they looked the more dangerous. Swansea had their moments, but their neat and organised football had almost no end product, and you could see why they score so few.
Forest deserved to win because that corner from McGoogle got its second wind to clear the mouthy goalkeeper Doris Dumbass and reached its intended target, Chambers, the best attacking header of a ball in the team, who cushioned it perfectly home.
So don't say we were lucky. Playing a match without a captain, a dangerous goalscorer and a fine centre back is not lucky. Winning in such circumstances is not lucky. It was weird and wonderful, but not lucky.
Having to play the last eleven games of the season without reinforcements is not lucky. It's not even weird or wonderful. It's just bloody stupid.
