Nottingham Forest produce ‘Champions League level’ display to close in on safety

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