Fleetwood v Forest: what Sean says

So there we have it – the season has officially begun and Sean O’Driscoll has overseen his first competitive game as Forest manager.

It wasn’t the most spectacular start, sneaking past Fleetwood with a single Dexter Blackstock goal, but what can we learn from the manager’s first post-match interview?

For a start, he believes more signings are needed – indeed, more defenders.

‘I would like to bring a couple more in if I can,’ O’Driscoll told the Post. ‘We have young Brendan in there and Jamaal on the bench – but that is it. We could do with a couple more.’

He went on to state that the Simon Cox transfer was ‘done and dusted’ over the weekend, which West Brom and the press have subsequently confirmed.

One thing we learnt from the game was that, even if our new team hasn’t quite gelled yet, the boss isn’t afraid of changing things tactically.

‘We changed things slightly,’ O’Driscoll said. ‘We brought Greg inside and pushed Radi and Andy into wide positions. It gave us a bit of extra width.’

He spoke about Greg Halford’s versatility allowing him the luxury of being able to do that, which is bad news for Greg who apparently wants to shed the ‘versatile’ tag.

Finally, O’Driscoll criticised Forest’s ‘little flicks and clever balls’ and called for them to retain the ball better. Hallelujah! The flick-ons are a hangover from when we had the predatory instincts of Robbie Earnshaw playing off a target man – they aren’t going to work when you’ve got one up front as we did last night. Sean O’Driscoll is a footballing pragmatist and one thing he’ll certainly be working on in training is more economic passing.