Teams can play well and still get beaten, that’s the nature of football. Teams can also play badly and win, football’s a funny old game. However, after losing 3-0 to Brentford on Saturday, Forest legend Kenny Burns was in no mood to think about such things when writing his Nottingham Post column.
Brentford took all three points at the City Ground courtesy of goals by Lasse Vibe (49′), Nico Yennaris (65′) and Sergi Canos (87′) in a game that also saw home defender Eric Lichaj sent off (77′) after receiving a second yellow card in five minutes.
With all three points, Brentford climbed up to 17th in the table and level on points with Forest on 46 points. However, it wasn’t the result of the performance that angered Burns, it was the manner of the performance itself that rankled the fiesty Scot. On the performance, Burns angrily said: “Nottingham Forest’s performance against Brentford was diabolical. It was not acceptable – at any football club in the country.”
Finding no real positives from the day, apart from the sunshine “coming through onto the grass, so it will grow quicker,” the Scot turned his attention to the performance itself which he termed as “dreadful.”
Taking issue with the players currently at the club, it is obvious that the former midfielder thinks that they simply aren’t good enough to take the team forward with him noting that: “Teams near the bottom of the table are taking three points off us very easily. Something has to be done.”
With the performance being so sub-par that it reached the aforementioned “dreadful” level, Burns was also scathing in his subsequent analysis of the collective efforts put in by the players, which he obviously didn’t think were anywhere near good enough – saying that they didn’t really deserve to pick up their wages for what they displayed to the near 20,000 supporters on Saturday.
He does say that there needs to be a response from these players, that they need to reflect on the horror of their performances and learn from it. He mentions that: “For starters, the players have to really look at themselves. They need to put a bit of effort in.”
His particular criticism was reserved for the shot-shy nature of Forest, who he thinks are hardly pulling up trees in the striking department. Questioning the lack of goals, saying that it’s a bad sign when your big hope is a centre-half will score from a corner, Burns then turns his ire on the front men, singling out on-loan Cardiff forward Federico Macheda for particular criticism. He said of the problems up front: “That just goes to show you what our strike force is like. I don’t know if Macheda could hit a barn door from inside.”
Forest face a trip to Berkshire to face 13th place Reading tomorrow night and Kenny Burns will be hoping that the players put in a much better performance and actually justify their wages this time around.
