Sndrlnd 0

Nottingham Forest 5
Hume 17 (og), Wood 31, MGW 34, Jesus 37, Anderson 90+5

A series of murders took place last night in Sndrlnd's Stadium of Lightweights which sent shockwaves through the world of football.

When Sndrlnd and Nottingham Forest took to the field to the off-key baying of the Sndrland faithful, nobody expected this encounter to end in a bloodbath.

The killing started in the 17th minute when Igor Jesus headed a far post cross into the net via the back of Trai Hume's head, which left people wondering what kind of name Trai was.

Not long afterwards, the Sndrlnd goalkeeper Robin Rooftop made the fatal error of passing the ball to Chris Wood. The ball deflected off Wood to Morgan Gibbs-White, who stabbed it back to Wood, who scored for killing number 2. The remarkable thing about this murder, apart from Robin Rooftop collapsing and pretending to be dead, was the quick thinking and precision of its execution.

By now, the Sndrlnd players realised there was a serial killer on the loose, and they panicked accordingly. A deep cross led to a cutback from Igor Jesus to the prolific and USA-bound Morgan Gibbs-White who fired in a third. In the 37th minute, chaos in the Sndrlnd defence allowed Igor Jesus to stab home a fourth as the Sndrlnd crowd stared in silent horror at the slaughter, or left for a pint of watered beer or argued with their own players or quitted the place for good.

In the second half, Sndrlnd fought back in the only way they could, by fouling and diving and bullying the referee. Some sweaty thug called Dan Ballard thought he had scored but VAR ruled it out, to the tastelessly expressed delight of the travelling Forest fans. Murder, after all, is no laughing matter.

The killing was not finished. The Sndrlnd players laboured away like wounded beasts, even their best efforts being batted away by the splendid Matz Sels, until they were exhausted in body and soul. They could only watch as Netz, Awoniyi and Anderson delivered the 5th fatal blow. The assassination was complete.

An investigation into the murderous affair came to the following conclusions:

Sndrlnd fans are nowhere near the best in the world. They count the corpses and pretend they are some kind of illusory aberration. Next year their team will probably get relegated.

Forest have recently developed into ruthless operators. This is down to Mister Pereira's insistence that every game is winnable, his narrowing down the left side of the attack, the return of Chris Wood, and the increased confidence and contentment of some very good players. Perhaps they'll all stay this summer. Better to be happy and loyal than play for over-hyped frauds.

Forest's third kit is awesome. A bit more neon in the orange/red bits would make them look like characters from Tron.

As the black cat reminds us, Murder is wrong. Except on Friday nights in the murky by-ways of Sndrlnd, when the Forest professionals are in town.

to be continued...