The Premier League weekend once again concludes with the Monday Night Football which for the second week in succession sees Nottingham Forest in action. This time they are on home soil as they host Aston Villa.
Forest were humbled at Leicester last week and will be looking for a second win of the season. Pressure is beginning to build on Steven Gerrard despite Villa going into this one off the back of three unbeaten matches.
Where to watch
The match will be shown as part of the Monday Night Football on the Sky Main Event and Sky Premier League channels. The show begins at 7pm with kick off at the City Ground coming at 8pm.
Nottingham Forest
It did look as though this might be a big match for Steve Cooper but then news broke that he has been given a new contract so it might be that with the immediate uncertainty of the manager being over will free up the players to start delivering the goods. That means they have to defend better and quite clearly they need to be more clinical at the other end of the pitch should their defending continue to struggle.
We saw last week that even though Forest lost 4-0 at Leicester, they had the first golden chance of the contest and had it gone in then things might have been a lot different. The issue Forest have right now is they can’t seem to concede just one goal. When they do concede they tend to do so in batches and if that doesn’t change soon then they are going to be relegated. The other problem they have is bedding a huge turnover of players in but you would imagine Cooper will soon work out the best XI of them.
Aston Villa
I think a lot of judges expected some real improvement for Aston Villa under Steven Gerrard after a first summer transfer window and pre-season under him at Villa Park but it is fair to say that those people are still waiting for what they wanted. Villa have been little better than ordinary this season and even their two wins have not been very convincing. They were hanging on against an Everton team there for the taking and the win over Southampton was one of the worst Premier League matches in memory.
I think where people really expect to see more from Aston Villa is in the forward areas. A squad with the attacking talent that they have should be scoring a lot more than six goals in eight matches. Just two of those goals have come in four road trips and one of those was straight from a corner so Gerrard needs to sort that out. He can’t say he hasn’t got the personnel so maybe a handbrake needs to come off or something.
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Team News
Steve Cooper has not disclosed any new injury concerns but having made a triple substitution at half-time last week claiming the game plan wasn’t being carried out you have to think he will make changes to his side here. Ryan Yates could be one to start.
Aston Villa have something of a crisis at left-back with Lucas Digne and Ludwig Augustinsson both missing. That means Ashley Young will probably fill in there with Matty Cash expected to return at right-back. Leon Bailey is a doubt.
Betting
I’m expecting goals in this match. I don’t see anything in the Nottingham Forest defence that suggests they are suddenly going to get it right. They might be able to contain a centre-forward but their inability to stop midfield runners has been going on all season and the creative, attacking midfielders that Aston Villa have should hurt them but Villa have defensive issues going into this match which should keep a Forest attack interested themselves. Villa have struggled to score on the road this season but this Forest team don’t look like keeping anyone out at present. I like over 2.5 goals here.
I also like the idea of Jacob Ramsey to have a shot on target over the course of the 90 minutes. The immediate positive is that he has had shots, albeit not both on target, in each of his last two matches and is getting into the sort of areas where he can be dangerous. Villa use John McGinn and Douglas Luiz in front of the back four to allow Ramsey to get forward and we saw with Harvey Barnes last week that the left sided player gets so much space to work in against Forest. I’m assuming Forest will be set up with an even more attacking intent as they are the home side here which should open up the spaces for Ramsey to do his thing. Midfielders regularly find the target against Forest with the way they set up and I’ll back Ramsey to do that here.
Tips
Back Over 2.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
Back J.Ramsey – Over 0.5 shots on target for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Bet365
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