Here is the NFFC news

Ivory Coast seem to be slight favourites but fingers crossed for Egypt.

Since Dyche took over we’re 12th in the league. Wet Sham, Wolves and Burnley are still bottom 3.

Don't tell Guru that, he'll burn down your house.

Didn’t realise he’d moved to Cotgrave.

If we carry on picking up points at the same rate, we end up on 42. Based on the last two seasons, that puts us about 15th.

Think that's borderline for Dyche continuing into next season - good finish and/or "good" Europa league exit (or a win) needed, I think.

I think that's unlikely. I feel there was a new manager bounce which has now worn off.

Then he'll go unless we win the Europa league.

Everton fans said he was streaky. As we've got a gap and there's a bit less pressure, he deserves the chance to see if he can get them playing a bit.

There's an argument (mentioned in passing on the latest Forest Focus podcast) that the improvement in form when Dyche came in was not so much a bounce created by the presence of a new manager but a bounce caused by the absence of the previous manager. It was a Thank Fuck Ange Has Gone bounce. Now, so this argument would go, we're seeing what happens when the players get used to playing under Dyche. Not sure I agree but it's a theory.

I think the recent blip in our form can be attributed to some things that Dyche, or indeed any newish manager, will struggle to have much control over..

• The loss of two muscular midfielders (Sangare, Yates)
• The lack of (decent, fit) centre forwards
• Ando looking in need of a rest.

We're being burdended by 6 months of significant overacheivement (and a bit of luck) under Nuno, and I suspect we've been operating more to our natural level since about March 2025. Some of the talk online (Twitter) about getting rid of Dyche is mental. Most of them will be reform voters.

New manager bounce, old manger absence bounce...... why dont we become a really forward thinking and innovative club and have a manager squad as well? We can keep rotating managers in and out to keep bouncing along happily. I am sure we are still effectively paying for the services of old mangers we parted company with as well, so we can just bring them back in on a game by game/ bounce by bounce basis

Whatever on form…..I still maintain that the strategy of “there are 3 worse teams than us” feels extremely flimsy.

I’m also concerned that some people seem to think Tuesday's game takes us out of relegation trouble. It doesn’t. It takes two results for our situation to look bad again. We are not playing well and it is possible to feel relief at the result at West Ham but also be very concerned about how we are playing. We need to fix a number of things sharpish.

More of Spurs/City type form. Less Everton (2), Fulham, West Ham, Villa.

Well, yes. But as West Ham and Burnley have won three games each so far, what are the chances of that?

That's the key thing, I think. The current bottom three have been so poor that somewhere just over 30 points is likely going to be enough to survive this season - Forest are a couple of wins and a handful of draws away from that now in early January.

The number of points to survive in the past three seasons has been:

2022/23: 35
2023/24: 27
2024/25: 26

Just had a quick look and after 21 games in 2022/23, we had the same points as today (21) but were 14th as the table was tighter. The season after we were 17th with 16 points, while last year we were third at this stage with 41 points.

West Ham are effectively eight points behind us with the goal difference, meaning they need three win/loss swings against Forest's results to overtake. That's a big ask for a club that's so far managed one win every seven games (with 17 matches to go). They've still got to play Liverpool, Chelsea and Villa away, plus Arsenal and both Manchester clubs at home.

Yes, Forest are clearly capable of fucking anything up but this calamity would depend on West Ham suddenly morphing into a top-eight club in terms of form. Highly unlikely.

They said this on Tuesday but I don't really buy it.

Our current points difference is 7 and goal difference is 8. Now, I don't think West Ham are capable of catching us (could be wrong but that's what I think) but if they did, let's say it goes: us W4 D4 L9; them W6 D5 L6. If all of those are one goal, they have closed that goal difference to 3. Doesn't take much for there to be another 3 goals in there somewhere.

Yes agreed. Get the points, and they probably get the goals too.

Well, Phil Wrigley (of chewing-gum fame) tried something similar with the Chicago Cubs in the early '60s. Somehow it didn't catch on.