Saturday’s defeat at Hull City was the 23rd and final away game of the league campaign for Nottingham Forest and they can look back with satisfaction at a record of 8 wins and 3 draws from those fixtures, yielding 27 points.
With some teams still having one away game left to play that number of wins is better than three of the current top six and seven of the division’s top-half (it is also more than Forest chalked up last season).
And with only Doncaster Rovers having won fewer home games than the Reds that 27 points has been a key factor in survival being achieved.
"We have picked up some really important points away from home this season,” said Lewis McGugan after a KC Stadium defeat which was hard on the visitors.
Pick of the results on the road was of course the 7-3 hammering of Leeds United but Forest also picked up wins at play-off qualifiers Blackpool and Birmingham City while also beating Crystal Palace 3-0 (the Eagles having conceded only 17 goals at home all season).
The home campaign comes to an end against Portsmouth this Saturday before the even harder task of putting together a squad for next season begins for Steve Cotterill.
Writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, Kenny Burns calls it a ‘ridiculous amount of work’ for Cotterill to address the issues thrown up by a dramatic year.
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