Blankety blank

Blues draw nil-nil at Nottingham Forest with Andy Munro watching.

Even Terry Wogan would have been hard pushed to call it entertainment, although in Aitor Karanka’s book this was probably a more enthralling scoreline than a 4-3 win.

However, the match was a predictably dour affair against a Forest side of a calibre that would have Cloughie turning in his grave. Blues started off in their now well-rehearsed careful and slightly painful mode and had Neil Etheridge to thank for going in at half-time on level terms.

In fairness, we upped our game in the second half to become slightly the superior side, helped by the introduction of an energetic Gary Gardner and the tactical switch of putting Ivan Sanchez into the number ten position replacing Alen Halovic, who apparently had a slight groin strain. With regard to the latter, disappointingly, there is still no sign of a Messi gene and one can only think that the Croatian press had been imbibing vast quantities of slivovitz before making that comparison.

Scott Hogan again looked like little boy lost up front without the Juke but overall a point wasn’t a bad result, especially given our recent freefalling.