At the City Ground on Saturday, Chris Wood scored a hat-trick as Nottingham Forest crushed Brighton 7-0 to rekindle their push for the Champions League the following season.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s team put on an incredible display as they recovered from a 5-0 loss at Bournemouth last weekend, with Morgan Gibbs-White, Neco Williams, and Jota Silva also scoring after Lewis Dunk’s own goal opened the scoring.
With the win, Forest closes the gap on sixth-place Chelsea by seven points and ties up with second-place Arsenal on points.
Due to English clubs’ impressive start in European tournaments, fifth place in the Premier League this season is nearly guaranteed to be sufficient for Champions League qualification.
Forest, who won the European Cup twice in 1979 and 1980 when the team was at its best under Brian Clough, didn’t participate in Europe again until 1996.
However, they are well on their way to ending their two-decade wait for continental competition after winning ten of their last twelve games.
Forest was only the second team in Premier League history to win by that margin after losing a match by five goals or more.
“That’s exactly what the fans wanted and what we wanted after last week,” Gibbs-White stated. “We have been working all week in training to make things right because last week was well below our standards, and the guys were amazing today.
“We caught them on the counter a couple of times and totally nullified everything they did.” In the last three minutes, we were clinical.
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