October 5 2008

The Football League

Job done at Forest with a 0-2 victory. Jamesey reflects on an excellent result, and the fickleness of fame.

Did our season start with that draw away to Ipswich, followed by two subsequent wins, home and away?

We were tardy starters last season and, despite our late surge under Neil Warnock, were still struggling to hit form in November.

Those of us who have faith in NW will be pleased that matters are looking distinctly more promising.

I listened to the Forest game on the BBC's worthy London sports radio station and, having perused some newspaper match reports and read the thoughts of our eyewitnesses on the HOL boards, we appeared to have achieved a thoroughly professional result.

Ironically, in my last column, I pondered on how players like Shefki Kuqi could regain our affections after a spell in the wilderness.

Shefki's strike at the City Ground hardly rehabilitates him but goes some way towards attracting cheers rather than jeers.

A couple more efforts like that and the Kossovar Finn could make the transition from useless plonker to peerless conqueror...stranger things have happened.

In my half century-plus as a Palace supporter, I have been known to complain (yes, honestly) about the vicissitudes of CPFC following.

But, unlike our latest hosts, Nottingham Forest, most of my low points came early on.

To be double European champions under Brian Clough and 30-odd years later, struggling up from the third tier of English football and currently anchored at the foot of the second tier, must be a bitter pill to swallow,

I recently read David Peace's superb, award-winning book, The Damned United, whose central theme was Cloughie's brief reign at Leeds United in the mid-70s.

Brian's suicidal, alcoholic adventures as the Leeds boss, make hilarious and sometimes tragic reading, although it must be said that the book is written from the imagined inside of Brian's head and is inevitably only a novelist's conjecturing.

The great man's best times were yet to come and, despite his immense success as a club football manager, the novel illustrates why he terrified the tripes out of the FA suits and, if you'll pardon the cliché, became the best national manager England never had.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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