This is all getting rather silly now.
Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy? Or – and hear me out – is this a mass thought experiment being undertaken by an evil demon of a mad scientist?
It’s an idea postulated by many, ranging from Plato, to Rene Descartes to The Matrix. The set-up is this: how can we know for sure what we know? To what extent can we trust what we sense and experience in this life? What tangible and scientific proof do we have that we aren’t just a floating brain a huge vat in a laboratory, being poked and prodded by some dude or alien in a white lab coat, provoking pain, pleasure, sadness, joy, all of the emotions. And while doing so, they note it all down on a clipboard.
Maybe this whole season is precisely this. How can it be otherwise? The only logical explanation is that I am a disembodied brain in a vat and various parts are being prodded to stimulate a virtual reality in a deep experiment to explore how a grumpy football fan reacts to their team being really really good. Not lucky, not on an improbable hot streak, just really good.
Losing at home to Cardiff in the Championship after a defeat in midweek at Bristol City was in a deeply weird way, comforting. We knew where we were with this. We knew how to handle this. We hated it, but at the same time, the world felt just so on its axis. This was the natural state of things. This was a cold but weirdly comforting Sunday dinner.
But this…this…what the fresh hell are we supposed to do with this?
You are probably screaming something like, ‘Enjoy it you miserable bastard and try to be just a little more fun at parties.’ Well, naturally, yes. This is sage advice and the whole thing transcends scrutiny and analysis. Don’t fight it; feel it.
Nonetheless, it’s difficult to compute. We’re in fourth place and its mid December. Against Aston Villa, for long periods it didn’t feel like a win was on the cards. We saw their World Cup winning goalkeeper somehow keep out a header from Nico Dominguez by…well, not really sure to be honest. We thought we’d equalised, but after an unnecessarily long delay, it was ruled out for offside. At that moment, a draw would have been a bonus. Not our day. Chalk it down to coming up against an excellent Champions League side and roll out the ‘We go again’ captions on the socials.
Yet the match stats painted a rather different picture. Possession was split 50/50. The goal chances we created were apparently better ones. Despite it sometimes feeling like not everyone was quite on it, we were still putting in a very decent performance. Players were stepping up all over the place and generally being heroic.
Of course, this may well be the peak. The highest point of the mountain. Ryan Yates and Murillo picked up a knock each and two late goals to turn a game around is not sustainable.
But we thought that after Bristol City in October 2021. We thought the same after beating Liverpool at home. We thought that after Wembley. We thought it couldn’t get any better after staying up. And after beating Liverpool away. And Leicester. And Manchester United. And then we get this.
So this is Forest 2024. We can now stick coming back from a goal down in the 87th minute to winning in the wonderful drawer labelled ‘Win at Anfield and Old Trafford.’
Even if all of this is just an evil demon of a scientist prodding sensitive parts of the brain in order to stimulate whatever this is, I’m cool with that. If we are all just prisoners in a cave chained to the wall and being shown projections of life only – like those Plato describes – keep me in this cave. I like it here. It’s nice and warm and comforting and just…really really nice.
I have almost completed the 92. Here are some observations on visiting lots of football grounds over the years.
If you don’t know me, I am the author of ‘Reds and Rams: The History of the East Midlands Derby’ and ‘The History Boys: Thirty Iconic Forest Goals’ (both available in the Forest club shop). I have written pieces for Mundial magazine, Football Weekends magazine, edited two award-nominated fanzines and was a columnist in the Nottingham Forest programme for eight years.
If you do know me, I’m truly sorry.
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