Young stunner earns Aston Villa draw to deny struggling Nottingham Forest

Armed with a new contract, Steve Cooper and Nottingham Forest needed a reaction and though they failed to get the three points they craved they halted their five-match losing run to earn a draw at home to Aston Villa, a result that also lifts them from the bottom of the table. For Steven Gerrard, it was another frustrating game as his team laboured in the final third but a glass half-full supporter might point to this draw extending Villa’s unbeaten run to four matches. Ashley Young’s sensational strike cancelled out Emmanuel Dennis’s opener on an autumnal evening by the River Trent.

After another eventful week, Forest supporters made their love for Cooper plain. As the Forest manager headed for the dugout a few minutes before kick-off, as is his ritual, he applauded all four sides of this charismatic stadium and gave the fans who adore him, some of whom in the Bridgford Stand unfurled a flag and a banner with the words “leader of the garibaldi” a soothing thumbs-up. Forest’s latest appointment, the former Watford sporting director Filippo Giraldi, observed the warm-up from the sidelines and spent the game sat alongside chairman Nicholas Randall in the directors’ box, a row behind Forest’s chief executive, Dane Murphy.

Forest hope Cooper’s new three-year contract will bring calm to the chaos but Dennis’s 15th-minute opener served to whip up an already vociferous home crowd. Morgan Gibbs-White sent a free-kick into the box from the right flank and Tyrone Mings allowed Dennis a free header, which he glanced past Emi Martínez. Gerrard was immediately deep in discussion with Austin MacPhee, the Villa set-piece coach, presumably asking how Dennis was afforded so much room to score on his full league debut for Forest. Dennis