Vítor Pereira watched on as his Nottingham Forest team were hammered 4-0 by Aston Villa on Thursday night.
This made the 1-0 Forest win in the first leg irrelevant as Villa now play Freiburg in the Europa League final.
Nottingham Forest were up against it with eight first team players not available for that game, with Vitor Pereira even admitting that he had only named the likes of Morgan Gibbs-White, Dan Ndoye, Murillo and Ibrahim Sangare on the bench to add some seniority to the squad, as none of them in a position to play. Murillo only getting two minutes as a very late sub and the others not able to get on the pitch at all.
Vitor Pereira having to now pick his players up for this Newcastle United match.
The Nottingham Forest boss accepting how tough this be, with still plenty of the same players unavailable, plus having to now see which of those who started on Thursday night can start again less than 72 hours later.
Nottingham Forest now having to face the reality of trying to get the points to ensure no chance of relegation as the next big step.
Vitor Pereira declaring ahead of the Newcastle United match: “Now it is important to win the battle until the end of the season and then we can think about building something to be back in European competition. We have to play again after three days…we played three days ago [against Chelsea] and we are playing again three days after this game [against Newcastle United]…we had a lot of injuries because the players are not machines and they cannot deal with this kind of schedule. To compete for the [Europa League] final we only had three substitutes fit enough to play and we took the risk with Murillo. He is not ready yet and it was very tough.”
Next up a 2pm kick-off against Newcastle United that comes only 64 hours after the final whistle at Villa Park.
Vitor Pereira: “It was a sad day [against Villa] but we need to come back stronger and recover to compete against Newcastle United. I hope our supporters understand that the players fought with everything they had but it was not possible.”
Taiwo Awoniyi and Luca Netz are available for the Newcastle United having missed Villa due to not having been named in their Europa League squad of senior players.
However, Vítor Pereira says he is unsure if any of Nottingham Forest’s injured players will return to face NUFC: “I can’t answer because I don’t know. I don’t know about Morgan, I don’t know about Ola, I don’t know about Callum, Murillo or Dan, though I think Dan can maybe come back. I have to understand the situation before the game. We have a day to recharge and to come back. Then we will play in front of our supporters at home to try and get points and improve our current situation in the Premier League. Let’s see what players we have available once we have recovered…”