THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
FOREST 2 WENDIES 1

Unless you think you know better - and there are a lot of people who do - the best thing is to go to the match and draw conclusions from what you actually see.

What we saw yesterday was a misfiring Forest side fight like dogs to wrench three points from a resurgent Wednesday. It was not pretty at all. There were a few moments during the first half when we saw glimpses of the snappy, slick passing that has destroyed opponents this season, but there were also prolonged periods when we looked too much like the jittery Colinwood side of recent memory.

Our lack of control was glaringly evident in two areas. Shorey's composure and accuracy were replaced by the dogged limitations of Perch, who either fly-hacked it out of play with his left foot, or turned the play in field with his right, with the result that Tyson was never released. In short, Forest's left side ended up being as effective as a weak spit.

The second obvious weakness was in midfield, where Moussi had a stinker. He looked tired, out of sorts, injured, whatever ... he was certainly nowhere near his best. McKenna seemed so distracted by Moussi's problems that his game, too, was reduced at times to mush. Neither player could produce the composed incisiveness of the man who should have been there ahead of Moussi - Majewski, of course.

So the truth was out there: without a proper left back and without Majewski, Forest got nowhere near the exciting fluency which had marked so many previous performances. The lack of a proper left back is nothing short of a farce. Mark McArthur addressed the lack of January signings on the radio, but his dry-mouthed excuses fell far short of explaining why an alternative left back was not recruited. Majewski's absence was put down to his being in the wrong frame of mind, upset as he was by protracted negotiations over a permanent contract. Whether Billy Davies is using team selection to heap pressure on the Inquisition Panel or not doesn't really matter; what does matter is that the manager's ambitions and the team's progress are being hampered by a clumsy structure which is characterised by over-caution, or laziness, or distrust, or by petty jobsworthness. While West Brom and Newcastle have been strengthened, Forest have been weakened, and it's showing on the pitch.

What makes it worse - what's going to make it really hard - is that we've been weakened at a time when opposing teams think they have "worked us out" and will come at us hard. Wendies did just this. They played with a confident brutality which was designed to shake us, and to some extent it worked. They were helped, of course, by the Worst Ref In History, a man riddled with bewildered spitefulness which bordered on deliberate dishonesty, a man so whistle happy he stopped play when the Wendies goalkeeper fell over his own defender, then sheepishly handed the ball back to the goalkeeper and ordered him to play on. So Forest found themselves struggling against 14 men (his linesmen were no better). Eighteen or nineteen if you count the Inquisition Panel.

But we won. And we won through sheer bloody-minded pride and Dexter Blackstock, and because, despite all the Wendies' pressure, we still had more quality than them. In the end, this was a wonderful victory which should restore some confidence after a crappy eight days, but it also indicated how hard we're going to have to fight to maintain pressure on the top two. At this critical time, it would be nice to think that everybody was pulling in the same direction.