The Myth of the Draw.

In the good old days of a point for a draw and 2 for a win, a draw was often a decent halfway house result. Nowadays with 3 points for the win, a draw is more likely to mean 2 points lost. That may be obvious to you and me but nobody seems to have explained it to our Colin.

CC`s approach to every game seems to be that we start with the score at 0-0. That means that at ten seconds past three we already have a point in the bag and under no circumstances is CC going to let that point get away. A draw for him is therefore a success. Not surprisingly this attitude has made Forest the league`s draw specialists with 13 draws from 35 games.

So does this mean that 13 draws is 26 points lost rather than 13 points saved? Not really. Look at this way. A better managerial approach would say from the outset "we don`t do draws". Play shit-or-bust football and go flat out for the victory - win or lose and nothing in between. Assuming that a draw means the two teams are more or less equal, theoretically all our drawn matches would then be replaced with 50% wins and 50% losses.

So exchange our 13 draws with 6 crushing defeats and 7 narrow wins and we have 8 more points and we`re pushing for an automatic promotion spot instead of waving one goodbye. Even a "win one, lose one, draw one" sequence is better than 3 draws but it doesn`t seem to cut any ice at the CG.

I reckon it`s all down to the attitude of the manager but I admit that not having a reliable "stick it in the net" striker doesn`t help.