So. Here's the maths. If Leicester City win today, and Bolton draw or lose, we're in the play-offs.
If we draw or lose, the season is over, however Bolton get on.
And if Forest give City a tonking ... well, it doesn't bear thinking about. We don't need another mentally scarring result; the Forest-Leicester fixture is already haunted by a match so extraordinary it features as their greatest victory, and our worst defeat.
The year was 1909, and the scoreline ended up 12-0 to the Nottingham side. Twelve. Nil.
Here's the Mercury's report of the game:
FOSSE have taken a good many beatings in their time, but they have never before participated in such a farcically absurd game as that at Nottingham yesterday.
When to the score of 12-0 is added the fact that Bailey made a number of smart saves and the Forest goalkeeper was never seriously troubled once during the 90 minutes, it will be seen that the beating was such a one that Fosse have never previously known since they have been a club.
In the circumstances, it is simply a waste of time and space to criticise the "game".
This much may be said, however, that Bailey, in spite of the huge score against him, was not to blame for a single one of the goals that were scored.
His backs and halves played so weakly that the Forest forwards were allowed to shoot almost as they liked, and if the custodian had showed as poor form as the men in front of him, the score would have been nearer 20 than 12.
Time after time the Forest forwards left the Fosse defence standing still: Time after time when a judicious charge by a Fosse defender would have dispersed danger, that charge was not made, with the result that Bailey was left helpless.
No goalkeeper can keep out point-blank shots from a forward who is allowed to run in and shoot as he likes.
More than one of the goals, by the way, looked to be scored from an offside position, but with such a crop this need not be insisted on over much.
Naturally, the ineptitude of the defence reflected on the attack.
Turner and West tried hard, but were badly supported, although Donnelly improved late in the game, Shinton and Holding were very weak.
The game is one that needs no dwelling on, and it would be well if it could be buried in oblivion.
SUCH a headline-grabbing trouncing merited an investigation, and a Football League commission duly met at the city's Grand Hotel.
It transpired that the Fosse team had thumping heads to match the thumping scoreline: the day before they'd been celebrating the marriage of their former team-mate, "Leggy" Turner.
Fosse were relegated that season, with the Mercury's redoubtable reporter Old Fossil penning an epitaph which looked back on a "season of falsified predictions, hopes rent in tatters, past feats obscured and fond beliefs shattered, a season of disappointment, depression and almost interminable disaster.
"Can one wonder that many who follow their fortunes are in despair? Or can one blame them?
"But let it be the feeling of which a poet wrote: 'Despair is hope just dropped asleep/ For better chance of dreaming'."
More than 100 years on, the result remains City's worst defeat and Forest's biggest league victory.
Bah, Leggy. Bah.
