Jake Brown’s Nottingham Forest blog: Things are going to plan at City Ground

Not often do we look upon our club with no worry or doubt but now the future looks bright under these very impressive businessmen, who have failed to do no wrong, appointing a very shrewd manager who vowed to bring back the passing ‘Forest way’ back to the club, and then backing him with £6 million plus in the transfer market for some very exciting players is certainly everything us fans wished for when we heard of the takeover news.

Much as been made and spoken of this season of this new look Nottingham Forest side, potential promotion and another rollercoaster season could be on the cards and that is much welcomed after what can only be described as a disastrous last season in the Championship. Such words are being spoken of like the new found ‘character’,’ resolve’ and ‘spirit’ of a side which only got put together during the last few weeks of July, not only by the majority of the fans, but it is being thrown in our face by every interview a player in a red shirt seems to do, this unbeaten start is certainly something the players are keen to keep, led by the seemingly faultless Sean O’Driscoll, the Nottingham Forest faithful certainly have reason for optimism down at Trent side.

An excellent unbeaten start as got the Forest fans purring over the football on show, a tight opening City Ground win over Bristol City, followed by two good points on the road against Huddersfield and Bolton respectively, in which both we should have probably claimed maximum points, a relatively comfortable 2-1 win over Charlton led us into the international break. Since then, we have snatched a draw at home late on against promotion rivals Birmingham and somehow nicked a point at Selhurst Park in a game Crystal Palace enjoyed near total domination over us, a sign as they say, of a good side.

Although, these two games have shown us that maybe we will get teams who will either just come to the City Ground not to play themselves, but in order to simply stop us from opening them up, and/or catch us on the counter.

Lets hope as we progress we can produce some of this ‘un-predictability’ O’Driscoll has spoken about and have an alternative to this silky football we are currently producing. As we now know, you need a dozen game plans in this very open, at times crazy division.

In my opinion, O’Driscoll as been very shrewd in bringing in the alternative of a wide right midfielder in James Coppinger in on loan and the five defenders we now have at our disposal, add to that the youthful Lascelles. Hutchinson, Halford and Collins can all occupy both full back and centre back positons, leaving us with an array of options and much needed depth.

So, we now go on to what I now believe is the real test of this well spoke of character in our new look Forest, the next three games will be Sean O’Driscoll’s biggest test of late, if we remain unbeaten during these upcoming ties and better still with a 7 or 9 points tally to boast of, then maybe we can really start to believe this side can go and pull up some trees this season.

It is already our best start to a season in more than 6 years, and in typical Forest fashion we are expecting to come back down to earth, that being said, we have arguably the best squad we’ve had in this division yet, or that of many years gone by. And with the much anticipated Henri Lansbury to come into the side (somewhere) we have some serious depth and quality in our ranks, particularly in the centre of the park.

Away at Leeds United, where we will not be satisfied with anything less than seven goals, a tasty Sunday afternoon encounter with our biggest rivals from across the A52 a weekend later, in which all current form sails down the river Trent at kick-off, and a Wednesday night game three days later against the only other unbeaten team so far, relegated Blackburn Rovers, which promises at least, to be a real football feast under the lights.

Stay unbeaten in these three games and you will surely get what can be an un-healthy dose of expectation so soon into this season, along with a lot more people jumping on the Forest bandwagon.

Lets just be patient, it’s a long hard season, after all, we would of taken the play-offs quite happily come May before a ball was kicked in anger in August. So in these games we will surely start to see what real character this side has in the short-term, knowing whatever the points outcome, real promising times are upon us at Trent side.