but that’s generally regarded as the best mark of quality or otherwise.
Generally; not when we're looking at two consecutive seasons. It's not like I went back in time to dig out an all-time low season to make him look bad.
He has had 3 seasons at the top level, a relatively small sample to draw far reaching conclusions from either way, and the first 2 of them portray a player who is nothing special in that department.
22/23:10 goals in 3303 minutes
23/24: 5 goals in 2506 minutes
Only the most recent one where he scored 18 stands out, which could very well be due to other reasons than him elevating his game to a new level during this time.
We were 17th last season and 5th the one before. You’d agree that we are closer to the former than the latter at present?
I wouldn't.
Historical record indicates that keeping a solid defense, defined here as one that could concede less than 50 in a season, is enough almost by itself to stay inside the top 10. Hardly a daunting task for me.
And the fact that we've, even with Frank's dire football and inadequate personnel, scored 27 in 18 and are on pace for a 57 goal season strongly hints that we could aim even higher than 10th. Teams that score in the 55-60 range regularly earn themselves European football, or come extremely close to it.
A team that concedes less than 50 while also scoring in the 55-60 range could very well finish 7th or 8th. Either way, even a 10th place finish would be closer to 5th than to 17th.
This constant lowering of expectations by Frank is an act of self-preservation that we shouldn't fall for; numbers and trends tell a very different story.
Recent form suggests ongoing form. Same for the team as the player.
Forest finished 16th in 22/23, 17th in 23/24 and 7th in 24/25.
Even without the Nuno and the Ange debacles early in the season that cost them a lot of points, they as a club were always closer to the first two.
Saying all that, under Frank, he’d have no chance of those numbers, so none of this is played out in a vacuum.
Sure.
There is nothing keeping anybody from making a case that Johnson from now on will be the kind of goal scorer implied by his numbers from last season; and that it wasn't a huge outlier of a campaign.
The case needs to be actually made though. Again, other things being equal, we have little reason other than recency bias to consider 24/25 as more reflective of his abilities than 23/24 or 22/23.
