Calderwood: Bring Them On

The Reds face three more teams involved in the title race in League One in their next three fixtures, starting with a trip to second-placed Tranmere this weekend, before a mid-week visit to Port Vale and the subsequent game against Swansea at the City Ground.

But after seeing his side return to form in an entertaining, hard-fought clash with Carlisle, Calderwood is confident the Reds have banished the ghost of their defeat to Oldham last week.

Forest will be frustrated, after seeing a Grant Holt penalty included among a host of first-half opportunities that went begging.

But the Reds' boss was pleased with the overall performance.

'We will sleep a lot easier after that,' he said. 'I am not frustrated by the result or the performance, there are too many positives from what the boys did.

'I can have no grumbles about their effort or application. We didn't get the result, but in other games that we have won, we have not had the same buoyancy of performance that we had on Saturday.

'I thought it was an excellent game. I know we have only taken a point and you can sit back and think that we have only taken one point out of six at home, but it is not like that.

'It is one point more than we had before - Tuesday night is the reason that we only have one point out of six, not Saturday's performance.

'This was a hard earned point and it went to the wire. We have come up against a good team again and the next few games are against teams who are also up around us. We will see where we come out at the end of that period.

'Are we better than they are? We will see.'

Calderwood was disappointed with his side,following the poor display against Oldham, which saw the visitors comfortably bring an end to their seven-match unbeaten run.

But was pleased with the character his players demonstrated against Carlisle.

'There are lots of good teams in the division, which we have seen. There is no need to start nashing teeth, the application is good and the atmosphere in the dressing room is all right.

'I was very impressed by our tempo in the first half, we passed the ball a lot better than we have and certainly better than on Tuesday night.

'The body language and the aura of our performance was much better.'

NEP

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