Nottingham Forest’s Stuart Pearce insists his job as manager is safe

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/16/nottingham-forest-stuart-pearce-insists-job-safe

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A bullish Stuart Pearce has insisted that his job as manager of Nottingham Forest is safe as he prepares for the club’s crunch clash at Derby County.

The Forest manager believes he will avoid becoming the next casualty of a game which has claimed the jobs of others. Nigel Clough was sacked by Derby in 2013 after a 1-0 defeat to Forest and Billy Davies was sacked by Forest last year following a 5-0 loss to the Rams.

Forest have won just twice in their past 18 Championship games to slip to 13th in the table but Pearce is confident that he will not be the next victim of the east Midlands derby on Saturday.

“I don’t feel my job hinges on the result at Derby. I don’t think it does, no,” he told the Nottingham Post. “I have spoken to the chairman, but not about whether my job hinges on this result. I do not put extra pressure on myself by worrying over whether my job is safe.

“One minute you can be a fantastic manager in people’s eyes, the next you can be written off. My relationship with the chairman has not changed. I had a long conversation with him. The one thing that came across, for me, is that he is desperate for me and this club to be successful.”

Derby are second, behind Bournemouth only on goal difference, and the forward Johnny Russell has challenged County to wrestle back control of the title race.

“You are always going to hit a sticky patch in the Championship, it’s a tremendously tough league,” he told Rams Player. “You could say we had ours before Christmas but now we have come back and won four straight games and kept four clean sheets. Up until the halfway mark, it’s all about keeping yourself in it. We have done that and now, during the second half of the season, it’s time for us to kick on.”