Nottingham Forest will try to win successive Premier League games for only the second time this season when they go to Villa Park.
Last Saturday, Nuno Espirito Santo’s team defeated West Ham United 2-0, securing an extremely important three points.
Unai Emery’s Aston Villa will be anxious to upset the Tricky Trees, who beat them 2-0 earlier this season.
The question is if the Portuguese manager would try to replicate his team’s performance in October under Steve Cooper. Or will he attempt to add his own spin on things? Nonetheless, there must be one commonality: stopping Ollie Watkins.
Felipe drops out of the starting lineup.
Felipe, a Brazilian defender, has only appeared in four Premier League games for Forest this season, starting twice. The reason for this is that the defender had a knee injury in September, and his first game this season came in December.
Last Saturday, the 34-year-old entered the starting lineup and played the entire 90 minutes, assisting Forest in keeping only their fourth clean sheet of the season.
Although the former Atletico Madrid player did nothing wrong, he appeared to be off the pace at times, which cannot be the case when against Watkins, who has 13 goals and 12 assists in the Premier League this season.
In actuality, West Ham didn’t really put the rusty defender to the test, accumulating only 0.50 xG in the match, but Felipe did lose more than half of his duels, losing five of his nine clashes.
Moussa Niakhate should start versus Villa.
Moussa Niakhate has been rather excellent this season in 15 games, and he has proven to be ready for the big occasion.
When Villa visited the City Ground in 2023, Niakhate received an 8.5/10 match rating from Nottinghamshire Live for his performance, which kept Watkins and the rest of the Villa attack quiet, with Sky Sports commentator Seb Hutchinson praising the defender for being “aggressive” with the Villa number 11.
Forest only had 27% possession of the ball in the game, forcing their defenders to remain alert for extended periods of time without the ball, which is not only physically exhausting but also emotionally depleting.
However, the Senegalese star rose to the occasion, and the table below displays his vital figures from the match.
| Niakhate’s performance vs Villa | |
|---|---|
| Stats | Niakhate |
| Minutes | 96 |
| Clearances | 8 |
| Tackles | 5 |
| Duels won | 5/5 |
| Interceptions | 2 |
| Stats via Sofascore | |
As shown above, Niakhate was incredibly proactive throughout, protecting his box superbly to clear the ball, reading the play to produce interceptions, and engaging with the attackers to make five tackles and win all five duels.
To summarize his performance, Watkins lost 75% of his duels, failed to finish a single dribble, and was limited to just 0.30 xG, earning a 6/10 rating from Birmingham Live, who claimed he ‘hardly had a sniff at goal’.
Furthermore, unlike Niakhate, Felipe is not the most athletic defender capable of keeping up with the speed of Watkins and possibly Moussa Diaby, which is why the former Mainz star must play ahead of the Brazilian.
But it wasn’t a one-time lucky performance for Niakhate, who has also bagged Marcus Rashford this season, who is identical to Watkins in terms of pace and strength while rushing in behind. In December, against Manchester United, the 27-year-old made four tackles and won all of his duels.
Simply put, Niakhate’s performance versus Villa might decide the outcome of the match this afternoon.
