Our Forest columnist Julie Pritchard, the creator of the classic nineties 'Brian' fanzine, seems delighted by the new dawn at Forest under Dyche, Woan and Stone...
If I’d been a tired old hack looking to preview the Liverpool away game in terms of Beatles songs, then it would have been (you have to admit it’s...) Getting Better. In the end the event was more Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - a truly euphoric experience bordering on the hallucinogenic. Beating them at Anfield last year was epic but this was off the scale.
As I’m sure is the case for many others, Liverpool away has always been THE game that I’ll never miss, not for weddings, funerals or baby showers (especially not baby showers). Until last season, we hadn’t won there since 1969, and while some might say we rode our luck in closing out our 1-0 win at Anfield last season - as if defence is not an art form too - they sure as hell can’t this time. You don’t win 3-0 away by luck, and it should have been 4-0 - that was no hand of god but merely the shoulder of Jesus.
Personally I haven’t missed a game at Anfield since the mid-80s, when the Adelphi was still a great hotel and the local female population had yet to turn orange. Far have we travelled and much have we seen: the 5-0 slapping in ‘88 that could easily have been 10 (and a further slapping from local scallies outside that was a rite of passage in those days); the quietly impressive debut of a skinny youth by the name of Keane that maybe 3 people in the away end had even heard of; the hope of the 2-2 draw from 2-0 down in April 1990, and of the 0-0 in the Clough relegation season; the delight of being 2-0 up (Stone 13, Woan 18) on New Year’s Day 1996, Woany missing a sitter a minute later...and the agony of losing 4-2, with Collymore flicking us the Vs and that long and tortuous walk back to Lime Street (no buses).
Funnily enough, last time we nailed a hoodoo from the 60s (at Highbury on Boxing Day 1987, when we won there for the first time since 1963), we won the next two games there too – these jinx-killing games are like buses (which actually run in London on Boxing Day – subtle hint to bus operators in Nottingham and elsewhere).
While Anfield has undoubtedly lost much of its bite and its raucousness, and indeed much of its soul, it’s nice to be able to squeeze into the Arkles for a last prematch pint without death stares and snide comments, or worse (“Is your Tinder date not working out? Come to the bar and ask for Stanley”). The tourists just want their selfies, and many of the locals have been priced out (or now sell their home tickets to tourists and only bother with the aways).
But Liverpool are still the team to beat, regardless of their current form. Maybe we can be their bogey team again, as we were in our 70s pomp. Maybe we already are. Sadly Arne’s days as Liverpool manager are numbered - he may even be gone by the time you read this – though I suspect the ‘Zombie’ earworms will long haunt his dreams.
We’re back playing to our strengths, everyone knows their roles again: Murillo and Milenkovic have got their swagger back; Gibbs-White is reinvigorated; Sangare has got into the groove; and Jesus, Savona and Supersub Omari get better with every game. It turns out our star players weren’t ruined by Angeball after all, perhaps just hiding out by the billabong until the heat had passed. Although Elliott Anderson could be managed by Liz Truss and he’d still be imperious. It all sparked such joy that the dickhead minority never really got going with their poverty chanting, which was a mighty relief.
How good must it have felt for our three Bald Musketeers. By my reckoning Dyche has beaten Liverpool once each with Everton and Burnley, but never at Anfield. I’m baffled by people thinking Dyche is dour, one-dimensional, a bit of a dinosaur – all hoofball, grinding out 1-0s at home and 0-0s away. Nah mate, yer ‘aving a giraffe. We might have only had 26% possession, but it’s what you do with it, and there was as much beauty in our play as we’ve seen in any era of NFFC. It makes you realise that certain sections of the press rely on cliches like today’s students rely on Chat GPT.
The real Sean Dyche is like your mate’s cool Dad, the one who was doing Euro Aways when he was your age. The one whose jokes are actually funny, who has the best record collection (vinyl, natch), and was probably the one that took you & your mate down the ressies when you were more interested in the pies and the pop than the footie. He gets us: “It’s the badge, init.” This means as much to the (Gari)Baldy Boys as it does to you & me. They’ve brought the pride and the joy back and I hope they’ll be here for a very long time.
While that was an unexpected 3 points in the bragging area, we have plenty of very winnable league games in the next 6 weeks and we should be safely tucked into mid-table by Christmas (which of course is when the real season starts). Last night saw a win over Malmo that was comfier than your new Christmas slippers, which accentuates the gulf between the Prem and most other leagues nowadays. Great to see Kalimuendo on the scoresheet, I hope we’ll get to see the best of him now. We should at least make the Europa play-off stage in February, though we’ll probably need to win all 3 remaining group games to avoid that additional strain on our energy (and our credit cards) by finishing Top 8.
Nice to see the ex-Malmo players of ‘79 celebrated alongside our own – the club gets this sort of thing right these days, in marked contrast to the Fawaz era. The young ‘uns might complain that we’re living in the past too much, but while it sure is wonderful to be creating new memories that are on a par, in many ways, with those days, let’s appreciate the remaining Miracle Men while we still can.
Read the Brian Nottingham Forest fanzine archives
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