STEVE Cotterill is getting used to this cost-cutting lark.

The Burnley boss has been counting the pennies ever since he was installed in the Turf Moor hot-seat last summer.

And he joked that he has even begun to adopt money-saving measures at home instead of working himself into a frenzy at the current situation.

Cotterill admitted: "I haven't looked at the table lately. I haven't read the papers and I haven't turned the telly on, so I'm saving electricity and the paper bill money in our house at the moment!

"It's a headache when you can't put out a team every week, but that's my job. It would be nice to just roll up and tell the lads to go out and win every game, but that's not the way things are.

"The 24 and 48 hours before and after a game aren't great and, at the moment, I'm still trying to work out what day I'm meant to be at my high point.

"I might go and sit in that oxygen tent and see what that does because it's tough at the moment.

"But the bigger the challenge, the greater the achievement, so we'll keep on going."

It's good to see that Cotterill has retained his sense of humour, albeit the gallows variety.

He cheerily jokes that physio Andy Mitchell had a stronger team in the treatment room on Tuesday night than he could put out against Spurs.

But there is a serious side to the Clarets chief, who refuses to use the injury situation as an excuse for the recent dip in results.

He added: "At some stage or other we all moan about injuries, and sometimes people don't know if you're crying wolf.

"But that is one thing we haven't really done yet. I talk about the injuries when I get asked the question, whereas I don't want to bring it up because it's a negative and I don't like that.

"But wherever we play, people are always saying 'you're doing great - well done', so people in the game know the score."

Tomorrow, Cotterill pits his wits against one of the game's elder statesmen in Forest boss Joe Kinnear.

It's another of those old pal's acts for the Clarets chief, who has already come face to face with two former clubs this season in Leicester City and Stoke City.

This time though, the post-match drink is likely to focus on the final days of the famed Crazy Gang at Wimbledon, where Cotterill played under Kinnear in 1992.

And the former pupil refutes the more widespread belief that his former master is at risk of losing his latest job at the City Ground due to Forest's dismal start to the Championship season.

Cotterill said: "Joe was my manager at Wimbledon and he was very good to me.

"I like him very much, but at the end of the day we are both professional enough to go for a result, so whether Joe is under pressure there or not is nothing to do with me.

"I wouldn't have thought he was under pressure there anyhow, considering he has just been allowed to bring Mick Harford with him.

"There would be no sense in that if there were any reservations that Joe was going to stay on.

"When he first went there, they had a long unbeaten run and he eventually kept them up.

"They have had a bit of a sticky start, but so what? They are a big club, with great traditions, and they will be a dangerous team."

Cotterill, who took in Forest's midweek Carling Cup defeat to Fulham after extra time, added: "They might be below us in the table, but they didn't look too bad on Wednesday night!

"That's the danger in many way because they are a bigger club than we are and they certainly have a lot more players to choose from, so there's no way we can afford to take this game lightly.

"The worry I have is that those big clubs down near the bottom of our league will come good and Forest are one of them, make no bones about that.

"But we've gone to teams this season and got good results at big clubs and teams that are doing well.

"The quicker we get to 50 points, the better!"