Damien
April 12, 2026
We had a good result in Italy and beating West Ham last time in the league made a lot of us feel a little better, but today probably won’t be a walk in the park. Nottingham Forest are battling relegation and playing in this position is never easy.
The fact that they are at home and Vitor Pereira seems to be listening to them now is reason to be careful. And that’s pretty good for us, because under Unai Emery we’re not a team that takes too many risks.
I imagine we’ll approach this game the same way we approach every game. There will be a plan. The players will know what it is and the objective today is to take all three points.
And if the match ends 1-0 and we are last in the match of the day, I don’t care as long as we have the three points because if that happens we are one step closer and we will be third and it’s all about stages and matches at the moment.
I know I’ve written many times this season that there’s no business ending, it’s all about business, but this really is the business ending of the season. These are the games where we have to win and it doesn’t matter how we do it. Success breeds success and now it’s all about Champions League football for next season.
That’s the nature of the game these days. It doesn’t matter how we get it, but both ways are equally important to us, so we can’t make excuses if we don’t score three points against teams we really could score three against.
So, in summary. We need three points today but it won’t be easy and we may not see as many goals as we did against Bologna this week. But we’re all sensible Aston Villa fans and as long as those three points are scored later we’ll all be happy.
And with that being written, it’s time for a bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Match the BBC Facts
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Nottingham Forest have won their last two home league matches against Aston Villa, last time winning three in a row against them between 1977 and 1979.
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Aston Villa are looking to complete the league double against Nottingham Forest for the first time since 2017-18 and for the first time in the Premier League since 1992-93.
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Aston Villa have lost three of their 17 Premier League matches against Nottingham Forest (W9 D5). Among teams they have faced more than 15 times in the competition, only against Coventry (16.7%) do they have a lower defeat rate than against Forest (17.6%).
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Nottingham Forest are winless in seven home league matches (D4 L3) and have failed to score in their last three; the Tricky Trees have gone longest without a league goal at home in February 2018 in the Championship (5 matches), and have only done so once in the top flight (4 in April 1911).
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Aston Villa have lost their last two away matches in the Premier League, the last defeat in a row between November and December 2024 (5), a run which included a 2-1 defeat against Nottingham Forest.
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Nottingham Forest have scored 13 goals from 228 shots at the City Ground in the Premier League this season, a conversion rate of 5.7%. This is the lowest home conversion rate of any team in a Premier League campaign since Fulham in 2020-21 (3.9%).
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Aston Villa have scored 14 Premier League goals from outside the box this season, more than any other team, while it was only in 2007-08 (16) that they scored more in the competition. Conversely, only Tottenham Hotspur have conceded more goals from outside the box in the division this season (11) than Nottingham Forest (9).
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In 2026, only Bruno Fernandes (12), João Pedro (10) and Igor Thiago (8) have more Premier League goals than Morgan Gibbs-White (7 – 6 goals, 1 assist). However, only one of Gibbs-White’s league goals this calendar year has come at the City Ground, scoring against Crystal Palace in February.
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Only Igor Thiago (1,608) has pressured more intensely in the Premier League this season than Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson (1,527). Indeed, 74.1% of Anderson’s pressures this season have been high intensity, the second highest rate among all players to record more than 1,500 pressures, behind Diego Gómez (77.3%).
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Aston Villa have won 14 of their 23 Premier League games in which John McGinn has started this season (61%), the highest ratio of any player to start more than 20 league games for the club this season. However, when he hasn’t started, their win rate drops to 25% (2/8) in 2025-26.
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