THE scoreline at Ashburton Grove read 5-0 and the time on the clock had ticked over to 82 minutes, the perfect juncture then for the Nottingham Forest supporters to take a deep breath, call on the lungs and start singing: ‘Where’s your European Cup?’

A history book reminder there that these sleepiest of giants have twice won the elite continental competition and Arsenal haven’t.

Going on about it now, of course, is akin to Pat Cash dining out on once winning Wimbledon, Peter Ebdon presumably telling anyone who will listen that he has been the snooker world champion and Wheatus insisting that they’ll have another number one record in the pipeline soon.

No right-minded fan would trade Forest’s grainy ancient wins in a far easier European Cup tournament to the success of Arsenal – the only team in history, I learned this week, to win every single match under the entire term of a UK prime minister. We were champs of the Trussian age, if that’s anything to brag about.

Forest fans clearly still think, deep down, they are a big club and who would be so cruel to tell them otherwise, but this size insecurity has become a pollutant in how we discuss our game.

Supporters madly obsess about who is a big club and who isn’t. Billy big bullocks debates range from who has won the most trophies, to who could build the biggest stadium, to how many replica shirts you can sell in Asia.

And you could see the madness getting to Antonio Conte, the Spurs manager, last week when Tottenham’s players and fans exploded into demented joy at scoring a last minute winner against Sporting Lisbon, only to see it ruled out with some Aslan magic – an old dusty offside regulation that nobody knew existed in relation to passing the ball backwards.

It seemed supremely unfair, but Conte told on himself with his analysis: “I want to see if it was in another stadium or for a big team, if they are ready to disallow this type of goal.”

Stop worrying about it so much. We’ll all be big one day.