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The night before Nottingham Forest prevailed against Midtjylland, going the distance in central Denmark to tee up a first European quarter-final 30 years to the day since their last, Ryan Yates was doing a spot of homework. The Forest club captain found himself flicking through the Champions League offering at the team hotel in Silkeborg, half an hour east of Herning, but naturally lingered on Tottenham’s rematch with Atlético Madrid. A trip to Spurs, of course, is next and, like Forest, they find themselves in a perilous predicament near the bottom of the Premier League.
Vítor Pereira has done whatever the opposite of dressing up Sunday’s meeting as just another game is, stressing with eight games to go the Premier League must come first, even if they have rekindled fading hopes of European glory. It has been an unexpectedly satisfying week for both sides, Forest overturning a first-leg deficit to advance, and Spurs building on an encouraging display, and result, at Liverpool by registering a welcome first win under Igor Tudor, whose side exited on aggregate.
Pereira also observed the green shoots at Spurs but insists his players must feel empowered by Thursday’s win, when a much-changed side impressed. The cavalry arrived from the bench – including Morgan Gibbs-White and Elliot Anderson – but it was an evening that belonged to the often unheralded: Yates, Nikola Milenkovic and Nicolás Domínguez. And those still finding their way: James McAtee, Dilane Bakwa, Lorenzo Lucca, and the England Under-20 defender Zach Abbott.
The uplift was instantly detectable post-match, the music blaring through the walls of the away dressing room as Pereira cast his mind forward. “We work a lot on what happens on the pitch: tactics, the physical and technical side, but we forget football is about the shape of our mind,” Pereira says, tapping his temples. “If we are confident, we can make fantastic things happen and play at a high level. If we are not confident, we don’t want the ball. In this moment, it is very important that everyone feels the confidence to express themselves. Things can change quickly.”
Both Forest and Spurs can vouch for that. Some – and, really, it is only some – of the gloom has been lifted. “Of course, you can feel it, the energy,” Pereira says. “You go inside the dressing room and they have smiles on their faces. To see the smiles also on the faces of the supporters, listening to them singing, it is fantastic and it is the connection we need to be a family. The mentality is to go there and try to win the game: I want to see us playing without fear of the stadium or Tottenham.”
Yates embodies the character, Pereira says, that Forest require if they are to get anything at Spurs, the 28-year-old leaving the field with an aching groin and his off-white strip caked in mud. Yates, who joined the club aged eight, means it when he says he wants to “play for the badge”. And he thought he had prevented penalties near the end of extra time, his 118th-minute header ruled out for offside. “Sometimes if I don’t say to him: ‘Stop, stop a bit, don’t go everywhere,” Pereira says with a smile, his right hand wandering. “He is pure, a top player, a top human being and we need to have these kinds of players in the team.”
Forest, who flew back from Denmark on Friday afternoon, have won only two of their eight matches under Pereira and last tasted victory in the top flight almost two months ago, at Brentford. Gibbs-White and Murillo played an hour at Midtjylland, Anderson and Ola Aina almost 50 minutes, though Yates says he and his teammates must turn the mileage in the legs into a positive. “This is what we work for, this is what we dream about, playing in Europe … if we can’t get up for a game like Sunday, then we shouldn’t be in the job. There will be no excuses.”
The 800 Forest supporters who added Jutland to the places seen on this season’s European tour will always cherish Thursday night on the outskirts of a sleepy town with a population comparable to Beeston, a Nottingham suburb. It represented only the second time Forest had won a European tie after losing the first leg at home, the first in 1979-80, after turning the tables on Dynamo Berlin, when they went on to retain their European Cup crown under Brian Clough. “There’s a full belief in the dressing room that we can still make this a very, very good season,” Yates says.
Now, though, the focus switches to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where Forest fans will again turn up in their droves. Are Forest expecting a different Spurs to the one bludgeoned in Madrid after their upturn in results? “I think we have to expect the best Tottenham,” Yates says. “They’ve got quality players throughout their whole team. Obviously, many injuries throughout their squad, but we’re expecting the best Spurs and we want to bring the best Forest. May the best team win.”
