In all fairness, this season’s Sky Bet Championship campaign has been one to forget for Nottingham Forest and their fans – so underwhelming have the Reds been.
Forest sit below halfway in 15th place in the table. With just five games left they are 14 points adrift of the playoffs and in very little danger of relegation unless something seismic happens below them.
Next season it will be a case of rebuilding for a side that should be sitting better than where they are at the moment.
One reason for their under-performance is a simple one – they don’t score enough goals. Strikers Lewis Grabban and Lyle Taylor have just four each and they head Forest’s scoring lists.
A tweet from sportswriter Paul Taylor (below), who writes for The Athletic, could give some indication of where Lyle Taylor sits in Forest’s plans for next season.
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Lyle Taylor – not even smouldering after Charlton fires
Taylor is the epitome of a journeyman striker. After all, he’s been at 8 clubs on permanent deals and seen action at a further 5 clubs on loan – according to website Transfermarkt. 13 clubs across a career that spans 13 years since he graduated from Millwall Under-18s to their first-team plans.
He’s been most active with AFC Wimbledon (150 games/55 goals/21 assists) but it was his spell at Charlton Athletic where he shone the most. In 67 appearances for the Addicks, Taylor scored 35 goals and provided 14 assists.
Even in the 2019/20 Championship campaign which saw Charlton relegated, he was still a goal threat. The London-born 31-year-old featured just 22 times for the Addicks that campaign but still managed to score 11 goals and lay on 1 assist.
What blotted his copybook there was a refusal to play after the Covid-hit campaign restarted for Charlton amid fear it would wreck a summer big move. That move was to be to Nottingham Forest – it was a move that wasn’t a success.
Lyle Taylor – reporter namesake tweet presents interesting possibilities
With Taylor, Lyle that is, misfiring for Forest, reporter Taylor’s tweet does present interesting possibilities:
Believe it was a relatively late decision to leave Ameobi out… Taylor was not initially going to be part of the squad today. But he was included on the bench when Ameobi dropped out.
— Paul Taylor (@nottmtails) April 10, 2021
Whilst it is only conjecture, Lyle Taylor only being included due to injury necessity does indicate one glaring point – he’s out of favour at Nottingham Forest. Why else would he only be considered if another striker is unable to play?
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The comment
It is odd that Lyle Taylor was only brought into the squad because Sammy Ameobi was unable to play. The operative part of this is ‘brought into the squad’. Not ‘promoted to the starting XI’ but actually ‘brought into the squad’.
Before Ameobi dropped out, Taylor wasn’t even going to make the bench. This is Nottingham Forest’s joint-top scorer – albeit with just four goals! However, he wasn’t in the matchday squad until fate forced manager Chris Hughton’s hand.
That says a lot. It’s like the silence of a guilty man – it says much more when it is left unsaid. Considering Taylor held out for a big move, his season so far at Forest hasn’t lived up to that nor seen him live up to what he is clearly capable of.
I could be wrong – I have been before – but something just strikes me as wrong about this whole situation.
