And then there were two.

Nottingham Forest rotated their entire team and still went to Stamford Bridge and dog-walked Chelsea yesterday, which poses a lot of questions about what the hell is going on in west London but, more importantly for now, removes Forest from the relegation battle.

Leading Aston Villa 1-0 on aggregate after the first leg of their Europa League semi-final, it was still a surprise to see the extent to which Forest had rested first-teamers, effectively telling us they’d rather go all-out for Champions League qualification than Premier League survival.

Quite honestly, the most fun outcome would have been Forest playing Champions League football while also in the Championship next season. Imagine fitting in a continental schedule around a 46-game league schedule and trips to Lincoln and Middlesbrough.

But by handily beating a completely lost Chelsea side yesterday, Forest jump to 42 points, not mathematically safe but traditionally so, given the usual target is 40 points.

Indeed, whichever team now ends up going down out of West Ham United (who lost this weekend) and Tottenham Hotspur (who won) is likely to end up doing so on a remarkably high points total.

After 35 games, Forest now have 42 points, Spurs 37 and West Ham 36.

In the last decade, the highest points tally for a team in 18th place at this stage was 30 points. The average was slightly less, at 29.6, while the highest points total to get relegated in the last decade was Newcastle with 37 points. The highest-ever points total for a team that went down was 42 points in 2002/03.

That team? West Ham.

And after the weekend’s results, things have turned aggressively against the east London club who are now between 75-77% to go down according to most models.

Much will depend on their final-day fixture at Leeds United, whom they must hope have nothing to play for by then. Before that, they play title challengers Arsenal and travel to Newcastle United, where people are fighting for their jobs but also an outside chance of a European spot.

Relegation is looming and so too are changes at boardroom level.

Karren Brady, the club’s vice-chair, recently stepped down and there has been a feeling of regime change coming, with other key figures of the past decade like director Tara Warren also leaving.

Despite the toxicity around the team, Brady’s departure still came as something of a surprise given she and Sullivan have spent the last year or two being pretty hostile and unrealistic towards potential buyers for the club, with one serious suitor who had an outline agreement to buy David Gold’s shares somewhat shocked by conversations with Brady and Sullivan, a pair who seemed rooted in the past and ignorant to the trouble the club was in while demanding close to £800m for a team languishing near relegation.

He walked away from the deal.

Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky bought into the club five years ago, taking just over 25% of the shares, but has been a mainly silent partner thus far.

That looks set to change, with Kretinsky now the favourite to buy the shares from the Gold family and increase his ownership of the club to around 40%.

In the end, despite many interested parties engaging Rothschild & Co. to buy the Gold family holdings as a pathway to control, the difficulty in working with Brady and Sullivan always meant the most likely result was a deal that saw Kretinsky take a bigger piece.

For fans, however, this is likely the worst possible option.

West Ham now face relegation and no material change in management, with Sullivan’s archaic approach to running the team destined to hold them back for the foreseeable future. The Hammers are not down yet, but they would at least expect to be huge favourites to bounce straight back given their large stadium and sweetheart lease deal will keep the revenues rolling and parachute payments should reduce the shock factor. If they can use the drop as an opportunity, clearing out overpaid underperformers and refreshing the squad then it could be an overall positive.

Given everything we’ve heard about the management of the club from the very top level, we won’t be holding our breath.

West Ham need a miracle.

Below the paywall today, a long look at the surprising situation FIFA find themselves in just five weeks before the World Cup — where the world’s two biggest countries don’t have TV deals in place to show the tournament.