You Reds, away. Nottingham Forest at Chelsea.

Words and images: Our Glorious Banners/ Simon Bristow.

There is something special about an away day.

The joy and ease with which we all rise at some ungodly hour, the total opposite to having to get up at the same time during the working week.

The meticulous planning of the travel arrangements. The initial meeting with your friends. A shopping bag full of cans. It’s not even 8am yet.

The journey is filled with discussion of what the game might bring. Some hope, some trepidation but a whole lot of excitement.

It’s a totally different experience to watching your team play at home. It's a much higher risk too, the likelihood is you’re making the long journey home unhappy.

This last point was particularly pertinent for us Forest fans when it comes to the Premier League.

©Our Glorious Banners. Nottingham Forest at Chelsea.

Last season - our first back in the top division for 23 years - saw us claim a solitary away victory, at Southampton. There were a handful of draws but mostly we lost, often badly (6-0 at City, 5-0 at Arsenal, 4-0 at West Ham... I could go on).

But, we stayed up and that gave us the opportunity to have another crack at away days in the Prem.

This result had been coming. We lost at Arsenal (2-1), but the second half performance in particular had given us hope of an improvement away from home. We lost at Man United (3-2), but we’d stormed into a 2-0 lead after just five minutes and on another day we would have had 4 or 5 in the first half - and maybe the (questionable) decisions wouldn’t have gone against us.

But still, this was a glorious victory. I’d seen us endure some heavy defeats at Stamford Bridge and despite one of the away draws from last season coming against Chelsea, we headed to the game thinking it was going to be a really tough one.

We outfought and outplayed them on the pitch, we easily outsung them off it. This was one of those special away days, the ones that make all the defeats on the road worthwhile. The scenes at the end were magic.

These are probably my favourite selection of photos I’ve ever taken, they just capture it all so perfectly.

Up the Reds.