Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa trade early goals in 1-1 draw

Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa recap: The Reds raced out to an early lead but settled for a 1-1 draw with precious few scoring chances at the City Ground on Monday.

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Emmanuel Dennis headed home his first Premier League goal for Nottingham Forest (5 points – 19th place), as the former Watford striker redirected Morgan Gibbs-White’s corner kick in the 15th minute. The advantage lasted all of seven minutes, until Ashley Young uncorked a low, long-range laser through a sea of bodies to pull Aston Villa (9 points – 16th) level.

The draw snaps Forest’s five-game losing skid, and give Villa a four-game unbeaten run (1W-3D-0L).

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They so nearly got there in the end, but Forest and Villa never quite managed to combine for a full 1.0 xG on Monday (they topped out at 0.95), where neither side could string anything together in the final third. It was a slog from start to finish, particularly for Forest, who accounted for just 0.28 of the xG total. Dennis’ goal seemed to come too early for Nottingham Forest, who immediately shrunk and became timid when the challenge of defending a one-goal lead (unlikely to score again as they were) called for courage and confidence to be the aggressors. Thus the response from Aston Villa came almost immediately and the prospect of scoring a second goal seemed even more unlikely than the first one.

There were murmurs that Steve Cooper’s job might be in jeopardy if Forest don’t start picking up positive results, but owner Evangelos Marinakis moved rather quickly to put the speculation to bed. Rather than give his manager the dreaded “vote of confidence,” Marinakis instead gave Cooper a new contract through the summer of 2025.

“It puts