It’s time for Nottingham Forest to arrive in Aston.
Back to Villa Park in the league for the first time in an eternity and to mark the occasion you can leave the big coat at home. Nottingham Forest are the opposition, one of the famous old names of English football, back in the top flight and after a couple of years struggling they’re doing well this season. You’d say well done and be pleased for them if it wasn’t for a couple of reasons.
First, they took no notice of PSR, had a punishment that made no difference and still kept the players they’d bought illegally. Then, they’ve developed a way of playing that’s got as much respect for the rules as their transfer policy has. Forest are, to put it mildly, not very nice. And there’s a third reason – they’ve taken our place in the league. We should be where they are, and if we hadn’t managed to lose there when we were a few minutes away from winning, we would be.
They’ve got Nuno as manager. Again, you could say he’s doing a good job but the way he does it grates. Forest had twenty-odd years of basket case owners with relegation as a result and now they’ve got decent ones, which sounds a bit familiar. They’ve had a few ex-Villa men as manager over the years including Martin O’Neill and Alex McLeish, who did a worse job there than they did for us, which in one case is good going.
Alex Moreno’s on loan with them and he’s even playing a few games. We’ve got more or less a full squad and that means whoever starts will be unbeatable. And if they aren’t, whoever comes on will be even more unbeatable. If we win this one we’ll be right back in the chase for the top five. We should have beat them there, we will beat them here.
