A very big win tonight. The kind of win we may look to at the end of the season and feel particularly grateful for, and the kind of win that we most certainly would not have registered two months ago.
The change in manager and the enormous reality check that followed it have, so far, turned the club on its head.
Gone are the promising performances dogged by exasperating decisions and eventual defeats. Welcome to the era of common sense and the delightful knack for, well, winning.
Let’s hope it continues.
Lining up without Bennett, Morgan, Cohen and Anderson is somewhat daunting. The team looked desperately weak and, musing over our prospects in the pre-game traffic jam, I might have taken a draw.
At 0-1 and looking fairly dour, I had no doubt in my mind that a point would suffice.
And then came the magic. Tyson effortlessly despatches a one-on-one, with his right foot, and Jeffers is sent off. All of a sudden it looked almost certain to be Forest’s day.
Most of the second half was abominable. There was very little effort to grasp possession and Wednesday’s height and graft kept pulses racing all evening.
The entire stadium was shrouded by a brooding mood swing over the visitors’ resilience. And who would have thought that Luke Chambers would be the one to emerge from the gloom?
After the second goal, which I hadn’t seen coming, we always looked comfortable.
Tonight was not about a performance, it would about grinding out three points and beginning the laborious process of cementing distance between ourselves and the bottom three. It was about back-to-back home wins, shrugging off a monkey that has weighed us down for months,
Derby tumbling into the relegation zone is a delightful bonus,
The only concern is our mounting injury list. A team without Bennett, Breckin, Morgan, Moussi, Cohen, Anderson, Earnshaw and Garner (suspended) would be hard pushed to thrive even in the league below.
I hope to see one or two new faces before the Cardiff game.
A word on the opposition. Wednesday are a fine old club, and their numbers tonight deserve credit at the very least. We have a common anguish in our burning desire to avoid a return to League One.
Like Forest, Wednesday is a club that has missed the boat in recent years. Both clubs are badly in need of a lick of paint, in a literal sense if you care to look at either stadium.
With bolshie Bill at the helm, I’m more confident than I have been for a long time that our return to splendour might not be so far away.
