Vitor Pereira challenged Nottingham Forest to play “Champions League” football before watching them romp to a 5-0 victory at Sunderland to ease themselves closer to Premier League safety.
Forest blew the Black Cats out of the water in a remarkable first half at the Stadium of Light to extend their unbeaten league run to six games and establish an eight-point gap over Tottenham inside the bottom three.
A delighted Pereira said: “It’s fantastic, fantastic. I asked my team to play at the level of Champions League because the Premier League is our Champions League.
“I said to them, to win at this stadium against Sunderland – they are 10 points above us – it means that we had to play at our best level, and in my opinion, the first half was full, tactically, mentally, pressing, creating a lot of problems from set-plays, scoring goals, conceding nothing.
“In the end, it was about being compact, defending and finishing the game with one more goal. We scored, we didn’t concede, a clean sheet, [and that’s] very important at this moment for us.”
If there was an element of misfortune about Forest’s opening goal – Igor Jesus’ header went in off the back of unwitting defender Trai Hume’s head – there was an air of calamity about the three which followed inside six minutes later in the first half.
Chris Wood made the most of keeper Robin Roefs’ error to extend the visitors’ advantage and sweet strikes from Morgan Gibbs-White and then Jesus with the home defence in tatters wrapped up the points long before the break, Elliot Anderson simply adding to Sunderland’s misery at the death.
However, with four games remaining, Pereira is refusing to consider his side safe.
He said: “In my opinion, it isn’t enough, it isn’t enough, it isn’t enough. We need more points and we need to keep our mentality. We cannot relax.”
Forest’s win piled the pressure on Tottenham, who travel to relegated Wolves and also West Ham, who host Everton on Saturday, although Pereira, who has given his players two days off, will keep tabs on neither game.
He said: “For sure, I will not watch the games because I suffer with my games, that’s enough. Maybe I will be, I don’t know, maybe at home, maybe drinking a pint, but not watching the games.”
For opposite number Regis Le Bris, it proved a sobering and painful night.
Le Bris said: “It hurts, it’s painful because it’s not the face we want to show, so for the players, I think it was like a punch in their face, and for me as well.
“After that, you can’t complain, you can’t look for excuses, you just have to go forward, and in the second half, this was our ambition, at least fight, at least show that you have a strong energy, you are proud to be a Sunderland player.
“And our fans were behind us, to be fair. They were probably better than us today and we tried to change the dynamic in the second half, we didn’t give up, which is the minimum.”
