Blackpool boss Simon Grayson admitted his side were indebted to goalkeeper Paul Rachubka’s display in picking up a point at Nottingham Forest.

”He’s been busier today than he has been on a lot of occasions away from home this season and at the end of it we were thankful to him for making some fantastic saves,” Grayson said.

”But I thought we defended well as a team. Forest gave us a really stern test and Colin Calderwood can feel really proud of his players after a performance like that.

”From our point of view sometimes you have to grind out a result and I was really pleased that we did that to get a clean sheet and be able to go home with a point.

”I was disappointed with our attacking play at times but you have to give Forest a lot of credit for the way they put pressure on us.

”We’ve now got 28 points at the halfway point in the season and if we repeat that in the second half we will be safe in this division.”

Forest’s hopes of survival are more complicated as they find themselves in the bottom three still four points adrift of safety.

Today’s point at least moved them up a place to 22nd in the table, and their boss Calderwood is adamant that they have the quality to extricate themselves from their lowly position.

”The belief in the dressing room is very strong that we will get out of the bottom three and after performances like that I don’t think anyone can disagree,” he said.

”Blackpool’s keeper has to take a huge amount of plaudits for his performance but the good thing from our point of view was that we worked him throughout the 90 minutes.”