Anthony Elanga scored twice to help Nuno Espirito Santo mark his 50th Premier League match responsible for Nottingham Forest with a 4-2 victory over Ipswich Town over Portman Road.
Three Quickfire goals in six first half of the first minutes did the damage for Forest, whose victory saw them go within a point of the second Arsenal placed in the rankings.
Nikola Milenkovic brought Forest first with a bright finish from the box and took advantage of the bad header from Liam Delap, because Ipswich did not get their lines from a corner.
The visitors doubled their benefit shortly thereafter when Anthony Elanga ended a lightning counterattack with an excellent left-foot finish in the left under corner.
Elanga took his second before the break and took advantage of some slack defending to continue racing to Milenkovic's long point forward to place the ball past Alex Palmer.
The solid defensive rear -guard of Forest was eventually broken when Jens Cajustte changed neatly replacement Ryan Yates before he curled a nice blow to the roof of the net.
But the side of Nuno restored their three-purpose benefit five minutes later via Jota Silva, who ended after he was fed in the box by the diligent Morgan Gibbs-White.
However, the scoring was not done there. Ipswich replacement George Hirst recovered somewhat proudly for the tractor boys in the second half of the stopping time with a well -achieved header.
The result moves forest to 54 points in third place, while Ipswich stays in the 18th, now nine points drift of safety after the 2-1 victory of Wolves over Southampton.
Data Debrief: Forest strengthen Grip on the top four finish
The appointment of Nuno on the city ground was confronted with raised eyebrows in December 2023, but over the 51-year-old of Premier League matches at the helm, the Portuguese forest changed from relegation thrust to Champions League-Gelovigen.
Indeed, Forest has won 54 points this season of their 29 Premier League matches. In the history of the competition, only four teams are not in the top five, after they have won so many points in this phase of the campaign, where those parties Newcastle United are in 1994-95, Liverpool in 2014-15 and Manchester United in 2016-17 and 2018-19 (all ending 6th).
But their triumph was inspired by the Electric Elanga, which yielded his very first Premier League brace on his 104th appearance. This season, the Swede has a hand in 13 goals in 29 top matches (five goals, eight assists), only one discount on his 36 outings count of Last campaign (14-five goals, nine assists).
And Gibbs-White, recently omitted from the first English team of Thomas Tuchel, also impressed. He registered his 40th Premier League objective for Forest with his assist for Silva (15 goals, 25 assists), which overtaken Bryan Roy (39), while only Ian Woan (44) has more combined goals and assists for the club in the competition.
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