Kinnear who had said in the build-up to the game that it was "just another game" just sat and watched his Forest side outplayed from start to finish. The game could not have got off to a worse start for Forest when Tommy Smith fired Derby into a 4th minute lead.

And it never looked like it was going to get any better for Forest for the rest of the game. All the Forest fans present inside Pride Park felt that it couldn't get any worse than last season's 4-2 defeat at this ground; but how wrong they were. After a nightmare start last season, Forest at least rallied to make some kind of game of it; but on Saturday they never remotely looked like scoring.

The surprise was it took Derby until 15 minutes from time to finally finish Forest off when Grzegorz Rasiak headed in Smith's cross. This coming soon after a bizarre substitution that saw Forest striker David Johnson taken off for young left-back Gregor Robertson, to cues from the Forest fans of 'You don't know what you're doing' directed at manager Kinnear.

It was a decision that, in this reporters eyes at least, was a clear indication that the manager has lost the plot. It has been reported that decisive boardroom action is likely should Forest lose a second East Midlands derby on Friday evening in front of the Sky TV cameras against Leicester City. And if they put in a performance as passionless as they did at Derby defeat is almost inevitable. Once again the manager failed to address the press, leaving striker Johnson to speak for the club and his comments "We let the supporters down after they paid good money to come to the game, especially after what happened here last year.

"They come out in their thousands and it is just not good enough. We just didn't give ourselves a chance after conceding a goal in the opening two or three minutes.

"We should have got a couple of tackles in, but we didn't and they took it well. We were just second best all over the pitch.

"To be honest, it could have been five or six, because we didn't cause them any problems." show how much he and the players care. But can the same be said about the manager? Once again his silence is deafening.

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