Ten minutes after full-time in Nottingham they were letting off fireworks by the Trent. Such was the bedlam raging inside the City Ground, it was impossible to hear them.
Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper has said in the past that a game at this great stadium serves as an excuse for the city to ‘come together’. Here, in a dazzle of Garibaldi red and white, was exactly what he meant.
Cooper’s Forest team attacked the club’s first home game in the Premier League for 23 years like they would a cup tie. Forest presented West Ham with a cyclone of energy, aggression, ambition and courage.