Nottingham Forest Blog: The games can’t come soon enough for Forest

The fixtures are coming thick and fast at the moment, which has enabled Forest to rack up some much needed wins.
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You get the feeling that the games can’t come fast enough for Freedman and his players.

The tricky trees followed up their impressive win against Bolton with an excellent victory over the much fancied Bournemouth.

Tactically, the fForest boss got it spot on against Eddie Howe’s men. Slightly negative, but massively effective it has to be said.

I can’t ever remember us sitting so deep for an entire match in my life. However, it worked a treat as The Cherries couldn’t get balls in behind us like they’re used to.

Bournemouth ran out of ideas and this was evident in the sheer number of final balls they put out of play.

I watched them tear Wigan apart recently, they did this by drawing them into their own half and then clipping balls behind them for Wilson to run on to. Dougie was wise to this, hence the deep back line and whether you agree or not, we took all three points. It was great to see Lansbury and Lascelles bagging the goals too, both players have improved dramatically since the arrival of Freedman.

This was impressively followed up with an away win at Reading, on Saturday. Never an easy place to go regardless of the Royal’s league position.

The first half was a cagey affair with neither side willing to compromise, no surprise given the pedigree of the two managers. Steve Clarke will no doubt turn around Reading’s fortunes for next season, but he had to play second fiddle to fellow Scotsman, Dougie Freedman on Saturday.

Forest won the game in some style too, Ben Osborn and Gary Gardner scored absolute belters from well outside the area, whilst Matty Fryatt skilfully jinked his way through the Reading defence for his goal.

For the first 20 minutes, the home side were definitely the better side but Freedman deserves a lot of credit here. He now has a previously vulnerable back line playing with real belief. This allowed us to dig in and weather the storm before going on to win in style.

Although the shape of the side hasn’t changed too much from Pearce’s time in charge, what has changed is the level of discipline and organisation.

It is very clear to see that Freedman has worked with the Forest defence and addressed the necessary issues, secondary to that he has allowed us to attack in numbers from the midfield.

It’s just a shame that the likes of Norwich and Wolves keep winning too, otherwise on this form you wouldn’t have completely ruled out a play off push. However, if Freedman extends his contract and continues to apply his tactics in the same manner next season; you wouldn’t bet against us going up.