League 'Progress' Under Nigel Doughty

Cup 'Progress' Under Nigel Doughty

It’s not only in the league that Forest have failed abysmally under Nigel Doughty, but cup competitions (once Forest’s speciality) have also brought little joy and plenty of embarrassment since Doughty became the main player at the club in the summer of 1999.

Although, Forest boast a tremendously proud record in the League Cup since 1999-00 they have failed to progress beyond the 3rd Round on all but one occasion (the 2004-05 season). All so different from the previous years which saw the Reds advance to six League Cup finals in a 14 year span - winning the competition four times. Forest remain the only club to have retained the League Cup on two separate occasions and Forest’s second back-to-back triumphs in 1989 and 1990 represent the last time ‘any’ side has accomplished the feat. Between September 1976 and November 1994 Forest never lost a single League Cup match at the City Ground – a total of 47 games.

In the FA Cup Forest have fared little better. The Reds progressing beyond the 4th Round on only one occasion under Nigel Doughty’s rule - the season in which they were relegated to League One (2004-05).

In recent seasons the pattern has perhaps not surprisingly got much worse. In the 2005-06 season Forest were eliminated in their first ever Football League Trophy tie, going down 3-2 to Woking – the club’s first defeat in a competitive fixture against non-league opposition in modern times. This was preceded by a humiliating 3-2 home defeat to Macclesfield Town, who were positioned 23rd in League Two at the time and winless in the 1st Round of the League Cup and succeeded by a humiliating 3-0 defeat at Chester City in the 2nd Round of the FA Cup. The only side who Forest did manage to beat in a cup fixture was Conference South side Weymouth, courtesy of a replay after The Terras had held Forest to a 1-1 draw at the City Ground.

The cup misery continued under Colin Calderwood in the 2006-07 season when Forest went down 1-0 to Accrington Stanley in the First Round, live on Sky. The media pundits revelling in the fact that when Forest lifted the European Cup in 1979 and 1980 Stanley were plying their trade in the Cheshire County Division Two. Forest did make some progress in the FA Cup, advancing past Yeading in the First Round and Conference South side Salisbury in a 2nd Round Replay, before producing their most impressive performance of the season to beat Charlton Athletic 2-0 at the City Ground in the 3rd Round. However, if anyone needed reminding of just how far the club has fallen under Nigel Doughty then they only needed to tune in to BBC1 on Sunday afternoon 28th January 2007. The 3-0 defeat to Chelsea not surprising in itself, but the utterly embarrassing eye-popping one-sidedness of the affair (Forest mustered just two goal attempts in contrast Chelsea’s 24) left the watching BBC viewers scratching their heads in disbelief at how a once great club could totally fall to pieces.