Nottingham Forest face Burnley in a crucial Premier League clash at the City Ground on Sunday
Vitor Pereira, manager of Nottingham Forest, celebrates victory following the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Quarter-Final Leg Two match between Nottingham Forest FC and FC Porto at City Ground
Vitor Pereira has emphasised the importance of the Nottingham Forest “family” ahead of a game against Burnley he has warned his players not to underestimate.
The Reds have shown plenty of grit and fight since Pereira’s arrival, no more so than against Porto on Thursday night. The Europa League quarter-final second leg at the City Ground proved to be a testing encounter, despite the visitors being reduced to 10 men early on, but Forest came through to win 2-1 on aggregate.
Their reward is an all-English semi-final with Aston Villa, but before then the focus switches back to the battle for top-flight survival. The Reds’ position in the table remains a precarious one with six games to go, and head coach Pereira believes maintaining a sense of unity can make a difference.
“It’s something that comes from inside,” said the Portuguese ahead of Sunday’s clash with the Clarets on the banks of the Trent (2pm kick-off). “It’s a feeling; we take care of the members of our family.
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“This is what I said to the players before the (Porto) game: ‘You are my second family, because I spend a lot of hours with you, fighting, suffering, celebrating, happiness moments, other moments, difficult moments. And we need to take care of the family.’
“You know why? Because some of the players that I didn’t select for the first XI (on Thursday), they deserved a lot to play the game and this was very difficult for me. This is the kind of decision that I don’t want to have to make but need to.
“The only way that I know is to face the next challenge and to have it in our mind. We know that we cannot win every game, but we need to give everything on the pitch. We need to make our supporters proud and to feel proud of ourselves at the end of a game.”
Forest are six unbeaten in all competitions going into Sunday’s match. They are desperate to avoid the fate that almost certainly awaits second-bottom Burnley, but Pereira has cautioned against complacency against a side destined for the Championship.
“We need to prove it on the pitch. This is not about words, not about speech, it’s about going out there to prove that we deserve to win,” he said. “I’m sure that they will come with everything, and we must play with everything that we have now.
“The confidence comes from the work of my players, the spirit of my players and our supporters. This is the confidence that I have.
“It’s not possible to control the results. It’s possible to do everything on the pitch to try to get the three points. This is what we can do. This is what we can control.
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“It is what we put on the pitch; what we want to be as a team, what we want to be in the moments that we need to play with the ball, to play without the ball, to help each other. This is the confidence that can come from what I see in my team and mentally in this moment. I think we are more consistent, because six games without losing is creating consistency.”
Thursday night represented Pereira’s first home win in charge of the Reds. Although his players haven’t always got the right result in front of their own fans, he has underlined how crucial the backing from the crowd will be in the run-in.
“Very, very important,” he said. “Very, very important. When we win, we create more energy to be committed, to feel proud, to feel as a family, to feel that we are fighting together – and this is when we win.
“Everybody will come on Sunday to support again. This is something that we create game after game after game.
“But we need to be mentally ready to compete until the end of the season. If we think that, OK, we win against Burnley and that’s it, is the big mistake that we can commit.”
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