Vitor Pereira challenged Nottingham Forest to play “Champions League” football before watching them romp to a 5-0 victory at Sunderland to ease themselves closer to Premier League safety.

Forest blew the Black Cats out of the water in a remarkable first half at the Stadium of Light to extend their unbeaten league run to six games and establish an eight-point gap over Tottenham inside the bottom three.

A delighted Pereira said: “It’s fantastic, fantastic. I asked my team to play at the level of Champions League because the Premier League is our Champions League.

“I said to them, to win at this stadium against Sunderland – they are 10 points above us – it means that we had to play at our best level, and in my opinion, the first half was full, tactically, mentally, pressing, creating a lot of problems from set-plays, scoring goals, conceding nothing.

“In the end, it was about being compact, defending and finishing the game with one more goal.…