Nottingham Forest beat Aston Villa 1-0 at the City Ground to hold the advantage in their Europa League semi final.
It may have been a well-taken Chris Wood penalty after a Lucas Digne blunder that separated both sides, but it was the logical and expected outcome considering performances.
Forest thoroughly outplayed Villa in every facet en route to a huge 1-0 win that makes a draw enough for them to reach a European final for the first time in nearly 50 years.
How did Nottingham Forest beat Aston Villa?
Collective force and individual performances
It’s basically impossible to single out as much as one Nottingham Forest player that had a poor performance. Every single one of them contributed to what they wanted to achieve and helped them execute Vitor Pereira’s strategies from the first until the final whistle.
But we must start with Elliot Anderson. One of the most consistent players in English football this season once again proved why he is Thomas Tuchel’s starter in the national team. Anderson was everywhere and did a little bit of everything.
But they operated at a very high level collectively, which enabled and catalysed great individual performances like Anderson’s.
Forest and Villa ended up sharing possession evenly throughout the game. And yet, the hosts’ most frequent passing connection was between Anderson and Morgan Gibbs-White (36 exchanges), two players that spent a lot of time in the attacking half.
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Meanwhile, the visitors’ most common link-up was between Ezri Konsa and Matty Cash (27 exchanges), two defenders.
This is actually a good segue into the next point.
Vitor Pereira outsmarts Unai Emery
Forest pressed Villa rather aggressively, often bringing five or six players near Emiliano Martinez’s goal. Emery instructed his men to embrace the pressure and try to escape from it. It’s a well-known will of theirs to generate space and inject pace into the game.
But Vitor Pereira orchestrated a very well-organized system that basically dictated how Villa played. Right-winger Omari Hutchinson would latch onto Youri Tielemans down the middle. Meanwhile, both Igor Jesus and Chris Wood led the line up front.
It induced the visitors to play down the left in the first half. The idea was to negate the right-hand side, where Morgan Rogers spent most of his time. To make matters worse, Emiliano Buendia played poorly and couldn’t get anything going for himself or his teammates.
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But most of the times, Villa tried to force going long. Even when they did manage to connect passes to Ollie Watkins, he was completely on his own. Forest centre-back duo Nikola Milenkovic and Morato ahd no trouble whatsoever dealing with him.
Morgan Rogers often found himself isolated as well, with no-one to link up with. It was a rare sight of them looking completely disjointed, like 11 individuals instead of one team.
Apart from two different 15-minute stretches, when Villa had somewhat of a presence in the attacking half, Forest dominated the game completely – with and without the ball.
Vitor Pereira’s scheme worked wonders. He prioritised fast-paced dynamics down the right with Hutchinson’s speed and skill and more intricate link-up sequences on the left with Gibbs-White and Anderson.
They tried to bait Villa’s press a few times, and went long a few others. The Igor Jesus-Chris Wood duo offers a lot of direct options and they made the most of them. One would look for the flick-on while the other came close to connect the wingers who would then look to cross for either one of them inside the box.
Both teams had similar good chances to score, Forest with Igor Jesus and Villa with Ollie Watkins. But the keepers performed great saves to prevent the goals. Jesus’ finish capped off a slick team move, while Watkins’ came from a deflected Rogers shot – which encapsulates well how the match went.
Everything went so well for the home side that Pereira only made two changes, their joint-fewest of any game this season across all competitions. Ola Aina picked up a knock and Zach Abbott replaced him, while Igor Jesus made way for Ryan Yates to close things down in stoppage time.
While the Portuguese manager showed great strategy and management for tonight’s encounter, Unai Emery struggled. His side couldn’t really get into the game, struggled to create chances and play as a unit.
Replacing Amadou Onana – who was great in his limited minutes – with Lamare Bogarde with Douglas Luiz on the bench, as well as keeping Buendia on for 80 minutes having the likes of Jadon Sancho, Leon Bailey, Harvey Elliott, Tammy Abraham and even Ian Maatsen as options, certainly didn’t help.
The Spaniard seems to be playing the long game, though. He refused to change too much of the structure and really go for it at any point. After all, there are still another 90 minutes (maybe more) to play next week.