DURING Blackburn Rovers’ 12-game unbeaten run to end last season, a run which has done much to raise expectations at Ewood Park, Craig Short would take his seat on the bench almost certain that they would not be beaten.

He has not been able to experience that feeling so far this season, not truly anyway, such has been Rovers’ inconsistency.

Gary Bowyer’s side are in their best form of the campaign with their midweek home victory over Birmingham City coming on the back of draws with Ipswich Town and Huddersfield Town.

But their failure to win back-to-back matches means they have yet to elevate themselves any higher than eighth, the position they finished in 2013-14, and it has led to frustration among the fan base.

That much was clear on Tuesday night when the half-time whistle was greeted by the sounds of boos after a distinctly lacklustre first-half performance from Rovers who, after a dressing down from Bowyer and his coaching staff, emerged a different proposition after the break.

Short can understand the frustration.

But he insists it is not for the lack of trying and he is quick to point out that Rovers are not the only team tipped to push for promotion not in top gear.

That includes tomorrow’s opponents Nottingham Forest who have slipped from first to sixth in the space of a month.

 “I can totally understand the frustration and I think the players can cope with that as they’ve had to suffer the boos at half-time a couple of times,” said first-team coach Short, who was a key member of the Rovers side which won promotion from the Championship, then known as the old First Division, in 2001.

“We had to have a few words at half-time (on Tuesday) and they came out second half and produced a performance. They’ve done that quite consistently in the last year or so.

“We don’t want them to get to half-time to give them a kick up the backside, you want them to produce from the first minute. But you have to look at this division.

“Ipswich Town have been on this great run but a lot of their games have been draws, then there’s Norwich City, who looked outstanding against us, and they’ve had a little blip. Forest are the same, they’re now six or seven without a win.

“Without wanting to hark back to my playing days, I found this league incredibly hard and I think it’s got tougher and tougher. There’ll be 12 teams after a play-off spot in March and April.

“People say when are going to go on this run? Well, how many teams go on and win five or six on the trot in this league? Derby did last year, yes, for a spell, but QPR got up and they weren’t that impressive at times.

“It’s about staying in touch.

“Of course we’d like to tie teams up by half-time. We come in at 0-0 sometimes and the lads are disappointed and we say, ‘0-0 is not a bad result because you do get stronger in the second half’.

“But sometimes the boys are a little bit nervous if they’ve come in at 0-0. They want to get an early goal, settle the nerves and calm the fans down a little bit.

“But you aren’t going into a Championship game too often and coming out 2-0 or 3-0 up at half-time. That hardly happens, especially away from home.

“Now our home form hasn’t been too bad and I think we’ve played some entertaining stuff.

“Yes, we’ve let stupid goals in and, yes, we’ve missed some chances, but I think we’ve got a genuine bunch of players who work for each other, and if you’ve got lads committed like that, then we will stay in touch.

“We’ve tightened up at the back a little bit lately but we’re not scoring as many goals as we should.

“It is frustrating for us and it’s frustrating for the players but we’re not a million miles away.

“Last year all of a sudden that 12-game run came and that mental build was like a snowball and toward the end of the season I used to sit there thinking, ‘we won’t get beat today’, I was that confident.

“You very rarely have that feeling as a player or a coach and it’s a nice feeling to have.”

That feeling may start to creep back if Rovers become the first team this season to win at the City Ground.

Forest have won three and drawn three of their six league matches in front of their own fans.

But they will go into tomorrow’s game having failed to win any of their previous seven outings in all competitions, drawing five and losing two.

“They have had a tough time recently, they have huge expectation on them as well, and if we had gone on the sort of run they have had, and a team rolled into Ewood, we’d be nervous,” said Short, a former manager of Forest’s city rivals Notts County.

“If a team kept us quiet for 20 minutes, the fans would start to get a bit edgy, a little bit tense, and it could transmit to the players.

“So we’ve got to take that mindset down there, keep them quiet and don’t let them get any momentum early on.”

Matt Kilgallon will return from suspension for Rovers while captain and fellow centre back Grant Hanley is set to return from injury.

And Short added: “We need a couple of wins, back-to-back would be great, and if we could go and win at a club like Forest it would set a marker down for us.”