In the meeting of lower middle-class upstarts, Bournemouth stopped Nottingham Forest dead in their tracks. Forest’s Champions League dreams took a jolt into reality, let alone any wild reverie of a Leicester 2016-like title charge. Just like Manchester City and Arsenal at the Vitality Stadium, like Newcastle a week previously, Forest were picked apart, a previously imperious defence disassembled by the warp-speed attacking of a squad with just 12 fit senior players.
Bournemouth fans wanted six. Theirs is the team of the moment. If Andoni Iraola and Nuno Espírito Santo share enigmatic qualities of improving teams and individuals, it was the Basque, the friendly ideologue, who prevailed over the Portuguese whose Zen-like calm masks hard-bitten sensibilities.
