Nottingham Forest 0-1 Chelsea: Blues confirms the spot of Champions League while Forest European Place protects despite the defeat

Those who had come to the city to wallow in nostalgia and dreams of Nottingham Forest‘The first shot to play in what we once knew as the European Cup for more than 40 years, ran away from the city and disappointed along the banks of the River Trent.

This was not a day for romance when the fifth is pursuant Champions League place.

This was not a day to stare at the photos on the walls outside the stadium of John Robertson and John McGovern Knelting in a team photo with the trophy they called old big ears and enjoying the legend of Brian Clough.

This was a day, instead, when perhaps a huge sigh of relief and money won and won and won and ChelseaA team that has spent more than £ 1.2 billion to build a normal team, greeted the last whistle, which confirmed their 1-0 victory, with the kind of wide eyes that suggested that they had gained access to the Elysian fields where they could make Gambol forever with the immortals.

For men such as Chelsea co-owners Todd Boehly And Behdad Eghbali, who hit a lot of backs on the touchline while they celebrate their players for the road supporters, this of course all was about the money and the passport up to £ 100 million in income from Champions League that means this victory.

The reality is that this was another season of desperate under -performance by Chelsea, a season in which they escaped humiliation on the last day.

The players of Chelsea deserve the honor for getting up in the Sleft cooking pan of the city when it mattered, but unless they spend the ransom of another king in the summer, this is a team that will be cannon food in the Champions League.

However, they earned their victory. In a normal competition they were the better team. Their belief in youth also received a qualified reward.

They are the youngest Premier League side for 25 years, with an average age during the season of 24 years and 36 days, the previous record of Leeds United of 1999-00 was defeated.

The downward side of it is that they still look like a side that desperately falls short of leadership. Bos, however, could not benefit.

Try as they could, Forest just couldn’t make the form that they had pushed in the top four and she had kept it there for so many of this season.

They had dreamed to reach the Elite Club competition of European football for the first time since the 1980-81 season and this was still their highest competition finish since they finished third in 1994-95, but they could only win two of their last eight Premier League matches and it cost them.

Before the game was a banner who looked like a taxi along the Trent -end, accompanied by a sign that said the destination: Europe.

That applies where, and the Forest Faithful has praised their players as heroes in a party after the game, but the seventh place and the Europa Conference League was not the kind of Europe they hoped for.

The atmosphere in the ground was hostile in the beginning and the home fans were stimulated by the row over comments made by Sky Sports’ Gary Neville who criticized forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.

Neville was banned by the club as a result of those comments and the crowd fed the idea that the establishment was against them.

Perhaps because the bet was so high, the quality of the game in the first half was surprisingly low. Both parties struggled to assemble passes or to look like a coherent movement.

Forest showed a little more intention, but very little deception and their attacks have always been founded on a aimless cross or a misplaced last ball. Chelsea defended some forest with relatively ease at them.

Only more than half an hour had passed that Chelsea forged the first clear chance of the game. Noni Madueke went from midfield and moved a pass to the path of Cole Palmer on the right.

Palmer curled a brilliant right foot cross behind the forest defense and Pedro Neto Timed his run beautifully to meet.

With only goalkeeper Matz Sels to beat, Neto could not get over the ball and his volley skied high over the bar from six meters. Maresca kept his head in his hands on the touch line.

Chelsea returned their professor almost three minutes before the break. Forest brought their first decent move of the game together and when Ola Aina bowed herself in a beautiful cross from the right, Chris Wood arrived for Robert Sanchez, but hit his volley centimeters over the bar.

Chelsea started the second half with a better intention and it was still in its infancy when the visitors took the lead.

The marking of Forest in a Chelsea corner was too casual from the start and when it was played to Palmer briefly, his crotch was only half erected.

Marc Cucurella brought it back into the box, Forest did not deal with it and Neto hit a cross-shot past Sels.

It rolled wide, but Levi Colwill was the fastest to respond and he moved it home up close for the Chelsea fans in the end.

But although the forest was pressed on an equalizer, they were not good enough to cause unnecessary discomfort unnecessary, not to be added to the end of the game, anyway.

That was when the golden chance finally came their way, when Sels launched a huge approval of his own half and Wood made it in the six-year box, the goal of his grace.

Earlier in the season, Wood was the striker who just couldn’t miss. He was a goal machine, one of the stories of this campaign.

But he blown himself with his team and so now, while trying to pass the ball past Sanchez, he lifted him high in the Trent end.