Nottingham Forest had been occupying the third place in the table for a long time. Like you, I thought that Nottingham Forest would fall quickly and would be outside the top 6 of the table. But Nottingham's performance surprised us all. After occupying the third place in the table for a long time, the team has lost its track recently. Nottingham has only gained 4 points in the last 5 matches. And that is why Nottingham Forest is now in the sixth place in the table. I will be happy if the team can qualify for the Europa League. If Nottingham Forest cannot do this either, then it will be a pity for them. They have worked hard.
To be fair they have done better than anyone expected and even if they end up finishing here, that is better than people expect them. They "may" drop to 7th place, and even in that case they go to conference league if I am not wrong. That means more money, sure conference league itself doesn't pay more, but it also means they are going to sell more tickets, more jerseys, more whatever and make some money from that. Even the beer you sell on the match day is a lot, so they should be happy to have whatever it takes.
We can't really consider what we are seeing at the moment as a bad thing, we need to see how things could change. So whatever we are dealing with, sometimes it may not be all that complicated and Nottingham needs to be just happy that they got to seventh place, that is more than good enough.