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Who to believe?

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 Straight in, hand up - I'm one of those guys who loves reading all the fans posts and threads on various social media platforms without ever really contributing to them too much myself, and recently I've found myself reading even more than usual, especially on various Forest sites & fan pages.

It struck me reading through them that never have I seen such a good example of the 'glass half full/glass half empty' divide, and it was actually really amusing.

First up the glass half empty brigade: "We can't hold a lead against Luton, struggled to pick up points again newly promoted teams and other teams around us". I can get this, throwing away a 2 goal lead against a team like Luton, who are fighting hard but hardly likely to look much past last day survival as a target, is a bit of a shocker. There are a few similar games this season where we have dropped points we really should have held on to. However compared to last season we are not crumbling badly when we give away a lead like we did last season (looking at you Fulham and Bournemouth!!)

Onto the glass half full view: "12 games in, compared to last season we are 4 points better off, with a much better goal difference, and with a nice buffer to the relegation places. We have got some of the hardest games of the season (on paper) out the way (Man City away, Arsenal away, Man Utd away, Chelsea away, Liverpool away) and not looked overwhelmed or embarrassed in any of them."

I'm kind of leaning towards the positive view - sure there have been some duff results but there have also been some unexpectedly good ones. At the start of the season I was expecting us to be sat on 12 points, so we are 2 points to the good of that, but perhaps the most pleasing aspect is that, apart from a couple of blips, we look much more solid as a team, and a lot more in control during games. Sure we dropped 4 points in the games against Luton and Burnley, but we picked up 6 points that weren't expected against Chelsea and Villa (sorry Birchy!!). Its a marathon not a sprint as the old saying goes. The vast wave of new faces (again!) seem to be settling in well in the main, and we have some real quality in the squad (World Cup winners, Champions League winners, Premier League winners - the list goes on).

With the news breaking that Everton have been docked 10 points, moving us further from the drop zone in terms of points and places, the relegation scrap feels a lot more distant than last season. With the international break giving the chance for a couple of players to recover from knocks, and a half decent bunch of games on the horizon (Everton, Fulham, Wolves and Bournemouth amongst our next 5 games) there is a quiet sense of optimism looming......

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