Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa Prediction

We look ahead to Saturday’s Premier League game at the City Ground with our Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa prediction and preview. Will Forest continue their impressive start to the season?

Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa Stats: The Key Insights

• The Opta supercomputer can barely separate these two, making Nottingham Forest slight favourites at 37.3%.
• Forest have lost each of their last six Premier League games when they’ve gone into the match in the top five, scoring just twice and conceding 20 goals across those six defeats.
• Aston Villa have lost each of their last three away league games, their longest such run since losing four in a row from May to August 2022.

Two former European Cup winners meet at the City Ground on Saturday, both looking to secure their place in the continent’s premier competition next season.

For Aston Villa it would almost be old hat by now, what with Unai Emery’s side taking to the UEFA Champions League with such ease this season. Their 3-2 win at RB Leipzig on Tuesday leaves them fifth in the league phase table with two games to go, well-placed for a top-eight finish and automatic qualification for the last 16.

Nottingham Forest will hope to be in their shoes next season after a sensational start to their campaign. Another famous win was collected by the Tricky Trees last weekend when they won at Old Trafford for the first time in 30 years, beating Manchester United 3-2.

That victory took them up to fifth, only two points behind reigning champions Manchester City in fourth, keeping them very much in the hunt for European qualification.

Having said that, Forest have lost each of their last six Premier League games when they’ve gone into a match in the top five, scoring just twice and conceding 20 goals across these six defeats, which range from 1995 to 2024.

This will be Forest’s 5,000th match in the top four tiers of English football, making them only the 12th side to reach that milestone in English Football League history.

They have the third-best away record in the Premier League this season, but they’re also strong on home soil. Forest have won three of their last four home games in the Premier League (L1), as many as their previous 17 beforehand (W3 D4 L10). They’ve also kept three clean sheets in those last four, as many as they had in their previous 30 at the City Ground in the competition.

That doesn’t bode well for Aston Villa, who have lost each of their last three away league games, their longest such run since losing four in a row from May to August 2022. They haven’t been narrow losses either, with all three being by 2+ goals – Villa last lost more games in succession by such a margin on the road in the league in September 1968 when they were a second-tier side (five).

Morgan Gibbs-White both scored and assisted in Forest’s win at Old Trafford, the fifth time he’s scored and assisted in a Premier League game for Forest, the joint most of any player along with Ian Woan.

Chris Wood has been the main man for Nuno Espírito Santo’s side, though, and is one of only four players to score 10+ Premier League goals this season – he is the first Forest player to score 10 Premier League goals in a season before Christmas, while he’s the first Forest player to do so in a league season since Lewis Grabban in the Championship in 2021-22.

Speaking of in-form strikers, Jhon Durán has scored the winner in four of Villa’s seven Premier League wins this season, and found the net spectacularly in their win in Leipzig in the week. Emery will once again be left with a dilemma of starting the Colombian, as he did in last weekend’s 1-0 win over Southampton in which he scored the winner, or having him come off the bench, as he did in Germany.

Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa Head-to-Head

Nottingham Forest have won just one of their last 11 Premier League games against Aston Villa
(D5 L5), though it was a 2-0 victory in this exact fixture last season.

Villa are winless in their last five Premier League away games against Forest, though four have ended level (L1). Their last such victory was in January 1995 under Brian Little (2-1).

Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa Prediction

This one almost couldn’t be tighter, but Forest are just about given the nod by the Opta supercomputer. The hosts won 37.3% of its 10,000 simulations, just ahead of Villa’s 36.0%.

That therefore means a draw occurred in the remaining 26.7% of sims, which might not be the most surprising outcome given both teams are separated in the table by just a single goal, level on 25 points (Forest +1 goal difference, Villa 0).

Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa Predicted Lineups

Opta Power Rankings

The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.

Ahead of kick-off on Saturday evening, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.

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