"KEEP it under your hat but Colin Calderwood is for the chop if Forest lose today, and they've already shaken hands on a deal with his replacement."

The local journalist who whispered these words out of the corner of his mouth in the press room at the City Ground last Saturday keeps a keen ear to Forest's affairs, so I took this offering about the manager to be a genuine nugget of inside information and whispered back conspiratorially: "Oh, right. Thanks pal. Who've they got lined up?"

"Ronnie O'Sullivan," he replied. "The board reckon they're so far behind, they need snookers."

A short time later, another hack angled his laptop towards me and said: "It's started."

The screen showed a Derby County fans web forum and underneath the heading "Forest In Court" was a spoof story claiming that the club had been charged with tax fraud because they had been claiming for silver polish since the 1970s.

Just below was another mickey-take in which Forest's chairman Nigel Doughty is rung up after midnight by the club's nightwatchmen and informed: "The City Ground's on fire, Sir. What shall I do?

Doughty orders the nightwatchman to stop panicking and replies: "Get back in there and save the Cups. It's vital that you save the Cups."

"OK, Mr Chairman," says the nightwatchman. "That shouldn't be a problem. I don't think the fire has spread to the canteen yet."

Not exactly side-splitting, I'll grant you, but the fact that there were so many jokes doing the rounds about Forest last weekend underlined the fact that their recent run of bad results had set them up for the sort of black humour that Derby County were compelled to endure while they were setting new records for failure throughout last season and the early part of this one. You remember the sort of thing.

The seven dwarfs are trapped down the mine by a rock fall and Snow White fears the worst when her cries of "Can anybody hear me" bring no reply. Then, deep inside the mine, she hears a voice singing "Derby will stay up. Derby will stay up – La-la-la."

"Ah well," says Snow White, "at least we know Dopey is still alive."

While Derby were last season's joke team and showed signs of retaining that dubious distinction at the start of the current campaign, Forest's defeat by Cardiff City last weekend made it nine games without a win to ensure that the title completed its passage across the East Midlands.

As Forest lay prostrate at the bottom of the table, six points adrift of the Championship's survival line, they were fair game for all the wisecracks and put-downs Derby fans could aim at them but I was there to see Cardiff scrape to victory and, with the Rams and the Reds due to resume hostilities at Pride Park on Sunday, I have to report that Calderwood's young team is by no means a joke outfit.

They were actually rather impressive, especially during their total domination of the first half, and – truth to tell between gritted teeth – that wasn't the first time I had seen them producing football of a fluency and quality beyond anything I had witnessed from Derby County this season.

On the four occasions that professional commitments have taken me to Forest matches this season, they have been the superior side every time in terms of passing, movement, ball-playing ability and pace but have been denied their reward because of impotent finishing.

That was certainly the case last weekend when Forest absolutely paralysed Cardiff for the first 45 minutes, setting up seven clear chances but somehow contriving to miss all of them, and ended up pointless because of a needless lunge in the penalty area by the otherwise impressive Lewis McGugan.

Cardiff's new goalscoring hero Ross McCormack – 11 in his last 14 games – converted from the spot to underline what superb value he is for the £120,000 paid to Motherwell in June but even their manager David Jones conceded: "I can't work out how Forest didn't turn round two or three up after making so many good chances."

Neil Warnock was similarly relieved when his Crystal Palace side won 2-0 at the City Ground at the start of this month.

"I was desperate for the half-time whistle," he admitted. "They ran the legs off us in the first half and, with just a bit more composure around the box, they'd have been out of sight before we sorted ourselves out."

That lack of potency in front of goal was to some extent caused by injuries to Forest's two most expensive signings – Rob Earnshaw from Derby for £2.65m and Joe Garner for £1.2m from Carlisle United.

Earnshaw, who had got into his stride with a flurry of five goals in six matches, was then ruled out for five games by hamstring trouble, while Garner did not make his first appearance until last weekend after taking longer than expected to recover from damaged ligaments.

Garner, short, compact and feisty, was described to me as "a bit like David Speedie" – is that really a compliment? – and in an impressive performance, underlined his ability to look after himself when he repaid an early whack from the craggy Darren Purse by leaving the defender poleaxed, head in hands, following a corner a few minutes later.

Earnshaw arrived as a sub in the second half and promptly produced a superb turn and burst of pace before hitting a fierce shot that Cardiff's impressive goalkeeper Tom Heaton brilliantly fingertipped past a post.

"That," said the quietly spoken Forest manager, "was a sign of things to come. It's been a long wait to get this pair on the pitch together but I'm confident they will give us the goals we have been missing and that we will soon start climbing the table."

To endorse this confidence, Forest exacted revenge on Palace by winning 2-1 at Selhurst Park on Tuesday night, while Derby emphasised their readiness for Sunday's task by beating Norwich City 3-1 at Pride Park and playing, in the first half, their best football since Paul Jewell took over as manager 11 months ago.

With the Rams elevated to 10th after a run in which they have lost once in 10 games, they should certainly be approaching the "derby" in the more confident frame of mind, and the fact that they have not last at home to Forest in 14 years is undoubtedly something about which the Pride Park faithful will be keen to remind visiting fans this weekend.

There will also, I suspect, be a fair number of plastic coffee cups lobbed into the Forest goalmouth in observation of a famous incident during Derby's 4-2 thrashing of their closest rivals in the 2003-4 season.

A back-pass by Wes Morgan hit the abandoned cup, goalkeeper Barry Roche was completely deceived by the bounce as he aimed to hoof the ball upfield and Paul Peschisolido was left to accept the gift and score Derby's second goal amid howls of gleeful laughter from home fans and groans of anguish from the visitors.

Now that really was funny but the joke could be on Derby this time if they assume that Forest's lowly League position makes them a pushover and if the Rams defence expects Earnshaw to be as dejected a figure with his new team as he was during his unsuccessful spell at Pride Park.

Former Rams players seem to have a knack of scoring against Derby – even goalkeeper Mart Poom managed it – and Earnshaw, who has a career of scoring a goal every couple of games, has gone one and a half matches without finding the net since making his comeback.

On that ominous note, let's hope that Derby fans are still the ones cracking the jokes next Sunday tea-time.

Q "How can you tell whether Nottingham Forest have lost again?

A –"Look at your watch and see if it It's 10 to five yet."

Boom, boom!