Nottingham Forest take step back after a run of steps forward

Nottingham Forest arrived in Cardiff with four straight wins in 2022 to play a team without a win since November, but came away with nothing.

The differences between a Premier League season and a Championship season are manifold, and the most obvious of this is the number of games that teams have to play. A Championship season is 46 games, and this comes with both costs and benefits. It is punishing; the two play-off finalists will have played 49 by the time it’s all over. But the 46-game season does also offer a degree of protection. Such is its length there is greater room for error. At least that’s what Nottingham Forest will be hoping after a strangely pedestrian performance at Cardiff City.

Forest went into the match on the crest of a wave. A small wobble in the games after Christmas had been corrected by a run of four straight wins, including a local derby victory over Derby County and an FA Cup success against Arsenal. Another three points would have put them fifth, smack in the middle of the play-offs and within reach of an automatic promotion place.

It would be the first time they’d been in the Championship play-off places since the last day of the 2019/20 season, when they conceded four goals at home to Barnsley to miss out to Swansea City by virtue of one goal. This attitude of  ‘a certain number of steps forward, a certain number back’ seems to have become part of Nottingham Forest’s culture in recent years. They’ve slipped down as far as League One since they dropped from the Premier League in 1999, and if they’re on their way back they sure have been taking a scenic route.

Cardiff City offered exactly the sort of opportunity that an in-form, promotion-chasing team would be looking for as an opponent.