Nottingham Forest made the trip to Villa Park to face off against Dean Smith’s new side Aston Villa earlier this evening.
With the Villans having a difficult season and seeing ownership as well as management changes, their hope come the end of the campaign is to at least see themselves occupy sixth place to secure a Play-Off spot.
Seventh spot in the Championship table is where we were sat going into the match and the aim was to not lose it to these given our own steady start to the year under manager Aitor Karanka but the point saw us edge to sixth.
Forest couldn’t have started the game brighter with two goals inside the opening six minutes from Lewis Grabban and Joao Carvalho, but the hosts did square things up at 2-2 with a mini-comeback of their own. With us taking advantage again through Matty Cash, they levelled again from the penalty spot and that was where the half ended.
The second half wasn’t too shabby either as Villa fan Joe Lolley continued his season best on a goal front by scoring the fourth to restore our lead with six of the second half being played.
We were then reduced to ten men as Pereira Figueiredo saw a straight red and Villa responded, scoring two more to take a 5-4 lead before Grabban completed his brace inside of the final ten minutes to tie it up at 5-5.
I think it’s fair to say that was a bit of a barnstormer.
Villa Park
Championship
28/11/2018 8:45 pm
Attendance: 32868
Referee: Hooper
| Aston Villa | Nottingham Forest | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abraham (11, 14, pen 36, 71), El Ghazi (75) | Grabban (3, 82), Antunes Carvalho (6), Cash (22), Lolley (51) | ||||||
| Nyland | Pantilimon | ||||||
| Hutton | Darikwa | ||||||
| Tuanzebe | Dawson | ||||||
| Chester | Pereira Figueiredo | ||||||
| Taylor | Robinson | ||||||
| McGinn | 79 | Colback | |||||
| Hourihane | Yacob | ||||||
| Grealish | Lolley | ||||||
| Bolasie | 83 | Antunes Carvalho | 70 | ||||
| Abraham | Cash | 77 | |||||
| Kodjia | 66 | Grabban | 91 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Whelan | 79 | Guedioura | |||||
| Hogan | Osborn | ||||||
| El Ghazi | 66 | Steele | |||||
| Elmohamady | 83 | Janko | |||||
| Bunn | Bastiao Dias | 77 | |||||
| Doyle-Hayes | Ansarifard | 91 | |||||
| O'Hare | Hefele | 70 | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 26 | Goal attempts | 8 |
| 11 | On Target | 5 |
| 12 | Corners | 2 |
| 9 | Fouls | 18 |
| 3 | Yellow Cards | 3 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 1 |
| 63 | % | 37 |