After making eight changes for this match, Vítor Pereira was asked why, with Nottingham Forest just three points clear of the relegation zone, he had taken such a risk with his personnel. “We change the players, but we keep the spirit,” he said. After this result, Chelsea’s hierarchy might be wondering quite what the “spirit” thing amounts to and where they might buy some of their own.
Forest ran through the home side, extending their unbeaten Premier League run to seven matches and doubling their gap to the bottom three with just three games remaining. Pereira was also able to rotate his squad before Thursday’s Europa League semi-final second leg against Aston Villa. For Chelsea, however, this was a sixth straight Premier League defeat for the first time since 1993, a 13th consecutive top-flight game without a clean sheet and a first (and solitary) goal in the league since the beginning of March. That the boos from the Stamford Bridge crowd were less oppressive at the finish than at half-time was only because so many had already left the stadium.
