Nottingham Forest boss Colin Calderwood spoke today about the pressures that he and his players had to overcome in winning promotion.

As the reality of Forest's elevation begins to sink in, Calderwood admitted:

"Everyone - not only our fans - expects Forest to waltz through the Division and you have to confront and deal with that kind of expectancy.

"Every time we had a setback, questions were asked of myself and the players but I knew that was the kind of challenge I was taking on when I got the job.

"So when you make mistakes and lose a match you have to accept you are going to take some criticism until you get the chance to put it right. That's what we have done."

And Calderwood pinpointed the run that has produced 19 points out of the last 21 to illustrate the character and determination within his squad.

He added: "When we lost to Doncaster at the end of March following a horrible performance we were 11 points behind Carlisle and they had played a game less!

"But I still believed we could do it because of the group of players we have here.

"Despite our disappointments at times I knew we were going in the right direction and the players have shown that from the beginning of April onwards.

"Some of our performances have not been out of the top drawer but we have ground out some results on occasions and now we've got the rewards for it.

"We all want utopia - to play creative football, score lots of goals and win matches. It's not always like that but at the end of the day we have got where we want to be so let's all enjoy it."