"That willingness to battle is the starting point," said Kelly. "And there is no question we have that.

"You have to work harder than the opposition, to get in their faces and close the ball down; to stop crosses and shots.

"When you have got the ability you can then go and play.

"But you have to start with that fight first. Kelvin going off was a big loss for us, but it shows the character of everyone else that they were able to get him out of a mess by fighting for that result."

Forest are now level on points with both Barnsley and Norwich on 46, although Southampton also closed the gap behind them, with a 1-0 win over Crystal Palace that took them to 44.

"We can't do anything about other club's results, you just have to take care of yourself," said Kelly.

"We have three games left against Coventry, Blackpool and Southampton. We have to make sure we get the right results.

"This was a good result for us. Now we have to concentrate on making sure we do the right things against Coventry."

Kelly had no qualms with the sending-off of Wilson, who was judged to have head-butted Greg Halford – although there seemed to be minimal contact between the two players.

"It was a red card. You can't put your head in there. From where we were it looked like a red card," he said. "Kelvin will take his punishment and that will be it.

"When you go down to ten men for so long you try to change your shape and your ethos on the game.

"You don't want your midfield players getting too far ahead of the ball because of the danger of getting hit on the counter-attack.

"Sheffield United are in the position they are because they are a good team. But they play in a certain way and we combated it well.

"We saw how United play when we watched them against Barnsley. They do what they do extremely well and the multi-ball system works extremely well for them.

"We knew what we were coming into, we knew how they would set up and we worked in the week on what we were going to do to counter that, how we would set-up against the diagonal balls they play into the final third.

"I thought we coped with that excellently. It was a fantastic result and credit to the boys for their effort and application.

"Sheffield is a difficult place to come to and they were first class – they deserved a result.

"It is always difficult to break ten men down because you go into two banks of four – but I thought we were a little bit better than that.

"We tried to play still, we tried to pass the ball and I thought we thoroughly deserved the good result we got."