Queens Park Rangers 2-0 Nottingham Forest
- Published
Conor Washington scored his eighth QPR goal of the season
Conor Washington and Joel Lynch goals secured QPR's Championship survival and set up a nervy final day for Nottingham Forest, who dropped a place to 21st.
After an open but goalless opening 45 minutes, Rangers led when Washington took a Massimo Luongo pass to fire past Jordan Smith and break the deadlock.
Ex-Forest defender Lynch headed in Rangers' second to stun his old club.
Forest must now at least match 22nd-placed Blackburn's final-day result to avoid being relegated to League One.
Blackburn are at Brentford on Sunday, 7 May while Forest will host Ipswich, with both relegation-threatened sides level on points but separated by a goal difference of just one in favour of the Reds.
Wins for both Rovers and Forest would save both sides from the drop if 20th-placed Birmingham fail to win at Bristol City.
At Loftus Road, there seemed little tension between the teams in the first-half of an entertaining tussle, as they exchanged decent chances apiece from Pawel Wszolek for the hosts and Mustapha Carayol for Forest.
Birmingham's opener at home to Huddersfield did not seem to have any impact on the tempo of the game, but Washington's opener after half-time certainly did.
News had barely filtered through that Blackburn were beating Aston Villa when Rangers scored their second, with Lynch towering to meet a corner.
Forest woke up and set about clawing back the deficit, peppering the goal with chances from Ben Osborn, Jamie Ward and Matty Cash who were all denied by Rangers' player of the year Smithies.
Six minutes of added time meant for a frantic finale, but Rangers clung on to spread relief around Shepherd's Bush.
It was only QPR's second win against Forest in 11 games, and their first since April 2014.
QPR manager Ian Holloway:
"It (the threat of relegation) has been on everybody's mind, including the supporters. It's a relief for everybody, but the job starts now.
"I'm delighted with the lads. They needed the fans and the fans were absolutely brilliant - they must have felt nervous but it didn't transmit to my team.
"I know I haven't won enough games. But no-one wants it more than me and I want this club to move forward."
Nottingham Forest boss Mark Warburton:
"We had to expect other teams to win. We know what we have to do. We're at home and our focus is now on preparing well and getting a good performance.
"It's up to us. We're at home. We can't control what happens away from us, and we have enough quality.
"We have been in it (danger) for a number of weeks now and every time they've played the players have had the talk of the threat of relegation and I've been saying they're handling the pressure very well.
"But we've got to take our chances. We looked more desperate and hungry to score after we conceded and we had chances and didn't take them."