I approached the game with a great amount of trepidation, as borne out in previous articles discussing my fears and worry about the game. The result overall,well not a disaster. a 0-0 draw against anyone of Swansea's ability is not to be sniffed at.
What is is though is the manner in which Forest drew a stalemate with a team who played with 10 men for 89minutes. After the early horrendous challenge by Taylor, Forest should really have took hold of the game by the scruff of the neck and taken it to the Swans.
However they seemed confused at the prospect of playing Ten Men rather than the Eleven they had done so much work on before. Swansea are a hard to to break down anyway, but with Ten men it became damage limitation. But coupled with the lightning pace and trickery on each wing they could attack you quickly.
Another problem that seemed to be occurring to me was Camps inability to kick the ball.Only once, maybe twice did he launch the ball. I' not an advocate of the long ball, but when it was played short each time, we had the defence facing 10 men to break down, with a line of the back four, that's essentially a very difficult prospect. If Camp had been able to launch it, we may have got attacks going more quickly.
Swansea in fact possibly had the best effort of the first half. A free kick which Borini sent in,tipped over the bar by Camp. At the other end de Vries saved well from Earnshaw when the ball was centred.
It had been cagey, it had been dull if I am honest, but it was mostly frustrating. Forest passed the ball well enough, but never with a sense of urgency, or a killer through ball. It wasn't helped by the front line largely being static.
The second half was a little more open, especially after the substitutions came, and I must say they came 10 minutes too late for the Reds. There seemed an unwillingness to drive at players on the wing.Neither flank got past their man much to deliver crosses. When they did come, largely in the end from corners they were too deep or too short.
Save for one which Earnshaw turned in, only to be flagged offside.Was the ball going in anyway? Who knows. From where I was it looked it was, but my position high in the Trent End is not always the best angle to judge the flight of the ball.
McGugan had has rasping shot turned away by de Vries, and a few other pot shots came to no avail. Then of course there was Cohen's effort. Having now seen the TV replay I don;t understand why this was not given. The defender (Tait?)had his arms raised as the shot hit him, clearly,on the arm, and Mike Dean waved it away. This for me was a bad decision, a blatant penalty in my opinion.
McCleary, Tyson and Tudgay all came on,Tudgay was ineffectual, but the other too ran a bit more than had been and tried to take men on, but to often it was round the edge of the tightly packed penalty area. Swansea filling it up with bodies to deny a ball into the box.
It was a great rearguard performance by the Swans. They can be proud of their 0-0.We can hold our heads high. We didn't ashame ourselves, but it could and should have been so much more. Definitely an opportunity missed. But there is still Monday.For those Swansea fans singing of Wembley at the end, Forest fans can teach you all to well the perils of presuming a good first leg result means that Wembley is near assured. They don't call this a lottery for nothing
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