Nottingham Forest thrashed Sunderland 5-0 on Friday night as they continued to pile the pressure on the teams directly below them.
Forest needed the victory, considering that Tottenham and West Ham were both victors in their Premier League fixtures on Saturday.
😍How would sum up the performance vs Sunderland in just one word?
What a performance!
Vitor Pereira set his team up to attack the Black Cats from the off in this contest, and a blistering spell in the first half saw Forest score four times without reply.
After the game, Stuart Pearce was seriously impressed with how the Forest head coach conducted himself with some of his calls made on the night.
Stuart Pearce praises Vitor Pereira
Pereira opted to go for the same team that played in the second half against Burnley last weekend and it paid real dividends.
Pearce felt that the decision to shove Gibbs-White out wide to get two strikers on the pitch was a bit of a masterstroke from the boss.
He told Premier League Productions: “Yeah, bold selection, two strikers and out on the flank as well. Hutchinson on one side, Gibbs-White on the other. But what they’ve done, they said to those four, “Go and press the ball. But, behind you, we’ll have a solid four and a solid two. So, we won’t be counter-attacked.”
“And I think it gave the front four the license to go and press intelligently, not just go man-for-man and force Sunderland to kick it. They almost said, “Come on then, where are you going to play the pass?”
“And they caught Sunderland out time and time again.”
Forest now still have work to do on the back of West Ham’s late winning goal and the fact that Tottenham managed to finally get a win on the board in 2026.
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That said, all Forest can do is look after their own business and continue putting points on the board in the final four games of the campaign.
The decisions made by Pereira are also giving cause for optimism among the Forest fan base and the praise he’s receiving on the back of this performance is richly deserved.
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