Vitor Pereira insisted that Nottingham Forest's quest to stay in the Premier League was anything but over despite moving eight points clear of the relegation zone. 

Forest put some clear daylight between themselves and the bottom three in some style on Friday, thrashing Europe-chasing Sunderland 5-0 at the Stadium of Light. 

Trai Hume's own-goal opened the scoring in the 17th minute, before three goals in six minutes from Chris Wood, Morgan Gibbs-White and Igor Jesus capped the first-half rout. 

There were just 5 minutes and 59 seconds between Wood putting Forest 2-0 ahead and Jesus making it 4-0, their shortest gap between three goals in a Premier League match.

But it got even better for the visitors in second-half stoppage time, with former Newcastle United midfielder Elliot Anderson concluding the scoring with a smart finish, securing Forest's biggest away win in the top flight since April 1995, when they beat Sheffield Wednesday 7-1.

The Opta supercomputer has now assigned Forest a 92.7% probability of staying in the Premier League next season, though West Ham (6.9%) and Tottenham (4.3%) both boast a game in hand against Everton and Wolves, respectively. 

Pereira, however, believes there is still more work to do for his time during their final four league games in 2025-26. 

"It isn't enough. We need more points, we need to win more games, and we need to keep our mentality," Pereira told BBC Match of the Day. 

"Five goals, a clean sheet, I'm very happy the players, the supporters, the club and the staff. We deserve it because we played a fantastic first half.

"We decided to come here and press them because we are fighting for our life. When we are fighting, we feel the need to do something, not to wait, we decided to press them and we did it very well and the fantastic goals from set plays.

"In the end one more goal, we did not concede, I am happy of course."

Sunderland suffered their joint-heaviest home defeat in the Football League, also losing 6-1 to both Newcastle United in December 1955 and to Birmingham City in April 1958.   

The Black Cats have also conceded more than three goals in back-to-back league games (also 3-4 v Aston Villa) for the first time since September 1958 in the second tier (0-5 v Swansea, 0-6 v Sheffield Wednesday).

Sunderland boss Regis Le Bris believes his side were reminded that they cannot let their standards drop in the Premier League.

"The big difference in intensity is clear. We started OK, but then progressively we felt that they were more involved, intense, pragmatic," Le Bris told Sky Sports. 

They pressed well, and we were unable to build up under this pressure and the momentum shifted at that moment.

"They were clinical, they scored four goals in the first half. It was like a punch in our face."

"It is a strong reminder, we dropped our standards maybe 10%, and we were punished, which was the case today. We were not at their level, no excuses."