Match Report 2002-2003
Saturday 14 December, 2002, Division One
Nottingham Forest At Valley Parade
Uncle Bob
It would be easy to take a flip view of City getting back on track after seven straight loses. Nicky Law suggested the law of averages would see his side win sooner or later. It's hard to stay losing.
Oddly enough through this has very little to do with the law of averages. At the start of the season City and Law had a team of battlers, as things got back on track those qualities had returned.
Peter Atherton and Jamie Lawrence are an odd pairing for the heart of any team but they provided the base for this win. Atherton busied himself breaking up Forest's forward motion, Jamie just got busy. To use an Americanism Jamie Lawrence brought his game today, City had game.
No one more so than Robert Molenaar, so often the problem, made a good display. He had learnt the lessons of the Forest game a few weeks back and marked David Johnson well. The back line, celebrating it's first clean sheet in a long time, looked steadied with Simon Francis and Lewis Emanuel both stopping the visitors down the flanks.
Odd though that Molenaar should be the lauded name after the game. Uncle Bob Molenaar giveth the goal after taking away so much from previous poor displays. He powered home a Lewis Emanuel corner just before half time to get the game's only goal and claim himself man of the match for some. What makes a player go from so poor to rather good in the space of weeks? The only thing about City you can say with any consistency this season is that we are inconsistent and no one shows this more than Molenaar.
All in all though it was a spirited City display. The Bantams got mucky while Forest, typified by a Daz white Eoin Jess, did not or could not raise a game.
So City winners and the run ends. 22 points from 23 games shows that we need improvement to stay up assuming a safety target of 50 points but today we had improvement.
Man of the Match
Peter Atherton
Broke up Forest's attacking play and nudged the odd forward ball.