The Chalkboard: O’Neill should have started Carvalho against Derby despite win

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Nottingham Forest moved within three points of the Championship play-off positions following a crucial 1-0 win over arch-rivals Derby County at The City Ground on Monday night, but manager Martin O’Neill still didn’t get everything right in terms of team selection.

On the chalkboard

Despite being the Reds’ record signing and a key player under O’Neill’s predecessor Aitor Karanka, Joao Carvalho has found first-team minutes in the Championship hard to come by since the former Republic of Ireland boss took charge last month.

Another unused substitute appearance against the Rams means that he has now featured for a total of just 37 minutes in the league under the 66-year-old, who has tested out a number of different formations and tactics to date.

The east Midlands outfit may have kept their promotion hopes alive with their latest success, but the decision to leave the Portuguese attacker, who has three goals and six assists in his debut season in England, out proves that the veteran coach is still making mistakes.

Why should he have started?

Yes, it may have been a derby and in those cases you may feel that you need the likes of Ben Watson and Jack Colback in the starting XI, but it just wasn’t needed on Monday.

The visitors were not a team who were willing to sit back and let Forest come at them, and that meant that there were spaces to be exploited in the pockets.

Starting Watson, Colback, Ryan Yates and another workhorse in Ben Osborn in midfield was simply overkill and a bit negative, and the Reds would have benefitted from having a player of Carvalho’s calibre on the pitch affecting proceedings.

Even if O’Neill may feel he is a bit of a luxury player away from home it shouldn’t be the same at The City Ground, and the talented 21-year-old should have been in from the start against Frank Lampard’s men.