Nottingham Forest lost to Chelsea to miss out on the Champions League on an afternoon when everything clicked into place for the Reds.
Aston Villa were beaten by Manchester United, whilst Everton managed to win at Newcastle, but a 1-0 defeat for Forest meant that Nuno Espirito Santo had to settle for seventh place.
On one hand, it’s a season of significant progress for Forest, but given that the Reds were sitting third in the Premier League after 30 games played, this might be consigned to the folder marked missed opportunity.
It’s hard to knock the Reds for their efforts over the course of the Premier League campaign. Evangelos Marinakis kicked every ball from the director’s box and it will be fascinating to see how he feels about how the campaign has gone.
Levi Colwill – the man who scored an own goal to send Forest to the Premier League – scored the only goal of the game on Trentside to leave the Reds to rue what might have been for the 2024/25 campaign.
Can Nottingham Forest still get into the Europa League if Chelsea win the Conference League
Sadly for Forest, this has been the end of the road as far as the Europa League goes for the football club, and it will now definitely be a campaign playing in the UEFA Conference League.
The only way Forest could have still squeezed into the Europa League would have been had Chelsea missed out on a place in the Champions League by finishing in sixth place today.
Instead, with Chelsea finishing in fourth place and Aston Villa dropping into sixth, it’s Unai Emery’s team that will join Crystal Palace in representing the Premier League in next season’s Europa League.
Forest will have to park the disappointment very quickly ahead of the new campaign. The Reds have to attack the Conference League with professionalism and understand the incentive of trying to win the competition in order to reach the Europa League the following year.
When does the Conference League start?
The draw will be made on August 4th, with Forest now needing to play a two-legged qualifier in order to reach the group stage of the competition, where a league campaign will ensue.
Forest will be seeded for the qualifying stage and the hope will be that lesser opposition can be drawn and a safe passage can be completed in order to make the group stages.
If that is achieved, the club will then play three home games and three away games in order to progress to the knockout stages, where Forest will hope to emulate Chelsea and make it all the way through to the final.
Receive a digest of our best Nottingham Forest content each week direct to your mailbox
