Nottingham Forest ended their 23-year wait for Premier League football with a narrow win over Huddersfield Town in the Championship play-off final at Wembley – a victory worth about £170m.
Promotion back to the top flight caps a brilliant turnaround to their season, which had started with six defeats in seven.
Forest’s promotion in their first ever play-off final comes at the end of a season which started disastrously.
The two-time European Cup winners took one point from their first seven games – their worst start to a season in 108 years – and when Hughton was sacked in September it looked like the team was likely to spend the campaign battling against relegation.
Nottingham Forest will begin next season as a Premier League side for the first time since 1998-99. Their gap of 23 seasons in between Premier League campaigns is the longest for any club.
Since the construction of the old ground in 1923, Huddersfield Town are the first club side to fail score on four consecutive visits to Wembley Stadium.
Nottingham Forest have been crowned champions/promoted in nine of their 12 matches at Wembley Stadium, winning here for the first time since 1992 in the Full Members Cup final against Southampton.
The team that finished in fourth place in the Championship have earned promotion in four of the last nine campaigns, having not done so at all in 15 straight seasons between 1998-99 and 2012-13.
