SkyBet EFL Championship
at the City Ground
Nottingham Forest (1) 1
Yohan Benalouane 2
Derby County (0) 0
Attendance: 29,421 (inc. 1990 away fans)
Pantilimon, Darikwa, Milosevic, Benalouane, Robinson, Watson (c) (Guedioura 71'), Colback, Yates, Osborn (Wague 90'), Lolley, Murphy (Bonatini 85')
Unused subs - Steele, Carvalho, Goncalves, Pele
Derby County:
Roos, Bogle, Keogh (c), Tomori, Cole, Huddlestone (Jozefzoon 46'), King (Johnson 53'), Holmes, Wilson (Bennett 71'), Marriott, Waghorn
Unused subs - Carson, Wisdom, Nugent, Malone
Well, what a difference a month makes, eh? Tonight, as his team adapted rather grandly to his preferential three men across the midfield structure, those very same critics were making a very different sort of din, as Forest's fiercest rivals were beaten in front of a sell out crowd at the City Ground.
Of course, there were more pressing and urgent matters to be addressed tonight, that were way more prioritous than mere football tactics, inter club hostilities and local bragging rights. The most unthinkable of all of the unthinkable unfortunate events, that could have happened anywhere in the known universe, happened right here, on tonight of all nights... a malfunctioning chip fryer rendered the usual huge turnover of regular customers at the finest food emporium in the whole of Nottinghamshire (and possibly the entire country), completely chip-less.
Have you ever seen grown men cry!?
Have you ever seen grown men cry!?
As if the police didn't have their hands full enough already tonight, keeping the respective factions of little shit-houses wearing fake Stone Island arm labelled coats (£20 a pop from Thoresby Market or Ebay) and retro trainers, away from each other, without being roped in to
deal with the problematic hordes of stroppy middle-aged fatties milling around in a state of confusion, causing a bottleneck on the corner of the Colwick Road, while going into some collective kind of meltdown, because they had been deprived of their rations of deep fried potato slices for one night. It wasn't a pretty sight I'll tell thee.
But, I was ravenous, because having already attended an Under 23 game in Sheffield during the afternoon, I'd not had time to grab anything to eat today, so I sat in the rather sparsely populated restaurant in the backroom of the chippy and polished off a plate of chicken and salad, while ignoring all of the strange looks I was getting for eating my healthy tea, sans any chips, which was obviously beyond the comprehension of several puzzled onlookers... "What!? Yer eatin' that! Wi' art any chips!?".
But, I was ravenous, because having already attended an Under 23 game in Sheffield during the afternoon, I'd not had time to grab anything to eat today, so I sat in the rather sparsely populated restaurant in the backroom of the chippy and polished off a plate of chicken and salad, while ignoring all of the strange looks I was getting for eating my healthy tea, sans any chips, which was obviously beyond the comprehension of several puzzled onlookers... "What!? Yer eatin' that! Wi' art any chips!?".
In the build up to the game, the noise levels were reaching a proper crescendo, as the ground filled up... and the only empty seats in the house, appeared to be those with tarpaulins draped over them, to segregate both partisan sets of supporters from each other. To their credit, in spite of being heavily outnumbered, the Rams fans contributed greatly to the atmosphere, for most of the night, but their team let them down, by not making use of the ball while they had it for long spells, because although the stats from tonight say that the visitors had something like 64% of possession, that apparent 'dominance' only resulted in them having two chances on target all night, which is actually two more than they mustered in their home defeat against Millwall on Wednesday night, which I had the misfortune of attending in person.
The game provided plenty of thrills, but little in the way of frills, or anything even slightly resembling a minimal amount of tippy-tappy fancy footwork, but what Forest did well (and Derby struggled to overcome) was akin to declaring trench warfare across the middle of the pitch, where the trio of: Joe Lolley, Dean Yates and Jack Colbackthey, let the visitors come at them, almost luring them in, but then rebuffing them in what became something of a battle of attrition, with Ben Watson covering a lot of ground in support of the aforementioned trio.
And if 'Frank Lampard's Derby' showed any signs of making progress towards the Reds area, the defensive pairing of Alex Milosevic and Yohan Benalouane, were in no mood to concede even the slightest of ground... and yes, that is the same Milosevic who arrived at the City Ground as a free agent, during the recent transfer window, in what is beginning to look like something of a major coup for Martin O'Neill.
It was one of those defensive lynch pins who stole in the claim the only goal of the game, inside the second minute, when Joe Lolley's free kick from out on the left reached Daryl Murphy, whose flick on was headed up in the air by Jayden Bogle as he attempted to clear the ball... and Benalouane (wearing a mask to protect a facial injury) was on hand to stretch out a leg and divert it over the line as it dropped back to the ground.
Martyn Waghorn got almost as raucous a cheer from the home crowd as Benalouane had, when he managed to escape from the Forest defence, albeit momentarily, but made a proper hash of his one against one shoot out with Costel Pantilimon.
Lolley and Murphy both had decent chances to increase Forest's advantage, but, in the main, the game was all about winning the battle for midfield supremacy... and to that end, Tom Huddlestone and Andy King were no match for their local rivals. In actual fact, one of them was withdrawn at half time and the other only lasted another seven minutes.
FT: Nottingham Forest 1 v Derby County 0
Not that any of you will care, but in the car on my way home, I was listening to Brian Laws summarising the game, which in truth, he did very well, and then Martin O'Neill had his say too, talking intelligently and at quite some length, about his current work in progress at the City Ground (with progress being the operative word).
The last time that I'd heard Brian Laws voice was the previous weekend, when I'd taken advantage of the unseasonably warm weather, to take 'er indoors, for a day out on the coast... and he was queuing up behind us to buy ice creams. My resident gannet had a flake in hers!
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| Wow! Just look at that glint of those floodlights reflecting off of the Brian Clough Trophy |
