Those who had come to the City Ground to wallow in nostalgia and dream of Nottingham Forest’s first shot at playing in what we once knew as the European Cup for more than 40 years, walked away from the City Ground and back along the banks of the River Trent disappointed.
This was not a day for romance in the pursuit of the fifth Champions League place.
This was not a day for gazing at the pictures on the walls outside the stadium of John Robertson and John McGovern kneeling in a team photo with the trophy they called Old Big Ears and of revelling in the legend of Brian Clough.
This was a day, instead, when Might breathed a huge sigh of relief and money won out and Chelsea, a team that has spent more than £1.2bn to build an ordinary squad, greeted the final whistle, which confirmed their 1-0 win, with the kind of wide-eyed celebration that suggested they had been granted entry to the Elysian Fields where they might gambol for eternity with the immortals.
For men like Chelsea co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, who slapped a lot of backs on the touchline as they watched their players celebrate in front of the away supporters, this was, of course, all about the money and the passport to up to £100m of Champions League revenue that this victory means.
The reality is that this has been another season of desperate underachievement by Chelsea, a season where they escaped humiliation on the last day.
Levi Colwill’s goal ensured Chelsea will play Champions League football next season
Forest will still make a return to Europe as they will play in the Europa Conference League
Chelsea’s players deserve credit for standing up in the pressure cooker of the City Ground when it mattered but unless they spend another king’s ransom in the summer, this is a team that will be cannon fodder in the Champions League.
They deserved their victory, though. In an ordinary match, they were the better team. Their faith in youth gained a qualified reward, too.
They are the youngest Premier League side for 25 years, with an average age across the season of 24 years and 36 days, beating the previous record held by Leeds United of 1999-00.
The down-side of that is that they still look like a side desperately short of leadership. Forest, though, could not take advantage.
Try as they might, Forest simply could not recreate the form which had propelled them into the top four and kept them there for so much of this season.
They had dreamed of making it into European football’s elite club competition for the first time since the 1980-81 season and this was still their highest league finish since they came third in 1994-95 but they could only win two of their last eight Premier League matches and it cost them.
Before the game, a banner resembling a taxi had been passed along the Trent End, accompanied by a sign that said Destination: Europe.
That holds true, and the Forest faithful acclaimed their players as heroes in a post-match celebration, but seventh place and the Europa Conference League was not the kind of Europe they were hoping for.
The atmosphere inside the ground was hostile at the start and the home fans were energised by the row over comments made by Sky Sports’ Gary Neville that criticised Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.
Chelsea ended a mixed season by ultimately achieving their goal of returning to the Champions League
The Blues have been inconsistent throughout the campaign but Enzo Maresca deserves credit for driving Chelsea into the top four via a strong finish
Neville had been banned by the club as a result of those comments and the crowd fed off the idea that the establishment was against them.
Maybe because the stakes were so high, the quality of play in the first half was startlingly low. Both sides struggled to put passes together or to create any resembling a coherent move.
Forest showed a little more intent but very little guile and their attacks always foundered on an aimless cross or a misplaced final ball. Chelsea defended what Forest did throw at them with relative ease.
It was not until over half an hour had passed that Chelsea forged the first clear chance of the game. Noni Madueke advanced from midfield and slid a pass into the path of Cole Palmer on the right.
Palmer curled a brilliant right-foot cross behind the Forest defence and Pedro Neto timed his run beautifully to meet it.
With only goalkeeper Matz Sels to beat, Neto could not get over the ball and skied his volley high over the bar from six yards out. On the touchline, Maresca held his head in his hands.
Chelsea almost came to rue their profligacy three minutes before half-time. Forest put their first decent move of the match together and when Ola Aina bent in a fine cross from the right, Chris Wood got to it before Robert Sanchez but struck his volley inches over the crossbar.
Chelsea started the second half with brighter intent and it was still in its infancy when the visitors took the lead.
Much of the pre-match spotlight was on owner Evangelos Marinakis, who attended the game
He had made headlines by opting to forbid Gary Neville from covering the contest
Forest’s marking at a Chelsea corner was too casual from the start and when it was played short to Palmer, his cross was only half cleared.
Marc Cucurella chipped it back into the box, Forest did not deal with it and Neto hit a cross-shot beyond Sels.
It was rolling wide but Levi Colwill was the quickest to react and he slid it home from close range in front of the Chelsea fans in the away end.
Hard though Forest pressed for an equaliser, they were not good enough to cause Chelsea undue discomfort, not until deep into the eight minutes added on at the end of the game, anyway.
That was when the golden chance finally came their way, when Sels launched a huge clearance from his own half and Wood took it down inside the six-yard box, the goal at his mercy.
Earlier in the season, Wood was the striker who simply could not miss. He was a goalscoring machine, one of the stories of this campaign.
But he has blown himself along with his team and so now, as he tried to put the ball past Sanchez, he lifted it high into the Trent End.
