Steve Mounie joins the list of rejuvenated players

Having so many players on the sidelines has caused Cowley more than a few
headaches over the past few weeks, and after the 1-1 draw against Wigan he
admitted he felt like he was managing with his arms tied behind his
back. Thankfully, one or two more players have re-emerged from the shadows to
play a crucial role in getting Town through what a very difficult period with seven
points out of their last nine available.
Under the Cowleys we have already seen Juninho Bacuna go from arguably Town's
worst-performing player to one of their prize assets; the improvement in his decision-
making and discipline, in particular, has not just been a joy to watch but also a vital
necessity given he has been forced to play four different positions (right-back, central
midfield, number 10 and now left wing) over Town's last six games.

Danny Simpson's return from injury has relieved the pressure at right-back, with
Jaden Brown only fit to come off the bench late on against Forest to make his return
on the other flank. But another of Town's most-maligned players earlier this season,
Florent Hadergjonaj, has proven a more than capable deputy at left-back, picking up
a clever assist against Charlton and putting in perhaps his best performance of the
season against Forest. He, too, has been asked to fill in various positions recently:
he's played as a winger on both flanks and finished Saturday in central midfield.

Doing the business up top was Steve Mounie, who has racked up more minutes for
Town in the last month than had in the previous seven months. He has proven a very
different but capable alternative to Fraizer Campbell and was a key player in the
success of those two corners, heading the first back across the box for Trevoh
Chalobah to strike before Schindler put it away, then later producing a powerful
header to score his first goal since February. Mounie won 12 aerial challenges
throughout the game, as many as all his teammates put together.

Exciting as it is to see what Town will do when the January transfer window opens, it
is extremely heartening to see the Cowleys and their coaching staff get so much
more out of so many of the players they inherited. That is the effect of good coaching
and good management, and bodes really well for the second half of the season.

Riding games out remains an issue

Seeing the game out was much more of a chore than it needed to be, with Town
contriving to give themselves a nerve-shredding final 15 minutes after having gone
2-0 up in the 49th minute.

"From that moment on we need to manage the game better than we did," Cowley
said. "The players decided to hang in there and we'd much rather them try to get
control. We know that Nottingham Forest are a very good team with the ball.

"I think for us we just gave the ball up too easily and just allowed them to mount
attack after attack after attack. We lost control of the game and we had to hang in
there and we managed to so do, so we're pleased about that, but certainly there's
some learning to take from it in the last ten minutes and injury time."
Even despite Matty Daly's late winner we said very much the same thing after the
Charlton game, where Town were dominant for sixty-something minutes before
allowing the opposition to come back into the game. Here, Town didn't manage to
get a single shot away after the 73rd minute; Forest created six chances in that time,
the first of which they scored.
Let's give credit where it's due: Town aren't conceding late goals with anything like
the regularity they did at the start of the season. They conceded ten goals in the last
30 minutes of their first eight games of this season, but Joe Worrall's header 74th-
minute header for Forest was just the fourth goal Town had conceded in the final
half-hour of their last 15 games.

Despite that massive improvement, Town still aren't making things easy for
themselves. The 3-0 win against Hull in October remains the only time Town have
won by more than a single goal all season…the only time since November 2018, in
fact.

The Championship is a difficult league in which to get your foot on the ball and look
to see games out by knocking it about and frustrating the opposition, but Town need
to find a bit more composure and learn to make life easier for themselves when
things are going well.