Aston Villa vs Nottingham Forest: A Clash of Revival and Curse
Four days after jolting their season into life against Club Brugge, Aston Villa walk back out at Villa Park with a strange mix of optimism and unease. The Champions League win has bought them breathing space. Nottingham Forest, still searching for a first league victory, arrive as underdogs on paper – but with a manager who has turned tormenting Villa into a speciality.
This is not just another early-season fixture. It is a clash between a club trying to prove last year’s surge was no fluke, and a coach in Oliver Glasner who has repeatedly ripped up Unai Emery’s best-laid plans.
Villa’s new spark – and an old fear
Villa’s start has felt eerily familiar. Last season they stumbled through August, didn’t score in their first four league games, then scraped a gritty European win that changed everything. From that moment, they caught fire: 17 wins in 19 matches, a run that dragged them from doubt to genuine contenders.
The pattern threatens to repeat, but with a twist.
This time, aside from that abysmal opening defeat by Brighton, Villa at least look like a team that knows what it wants to be. Emery has tightened the defensive structure far earlier than last year; the chaos and confusion of the 2025-26 opening weeks have been replaced by something more deliberate, more controlled.
Against Brugge on Tuesday, the attacking play finally caught up. Passes snapped into place, runners broke lines, and Villa looked like a side capable of hurting teams again rather than just surviving them. The tempo was higher, the intent clearer.
Yet the numbers do not lie. Villa stand on the brink of an unwanted slice of history: they could become the first club in English league football ever to go goalless in their opening four games in successive seasons. For a club with Champions League ambitions and a manager of Emery’s pedigree, that would be a brutal statistic to carry.
Help may be on the way from the bench.
Ibrahim Mbaye, one of the headline signings of the summer, is still waiting to step into this new era. So is Johan Manzambi, the Ballon d’Or Young Talent of the Year nominee whose arrival signalled Villa’s growing pull in the market. Both are yet to make their debuts. Both could walk into this fixture and change its rhythm completely.
Emery does not just need them for the long term. He may need them now.
Fortress Villa Park – but a different Villa
History leans heavily towards the hosts. Villa have strung together six straight Premier League home wins against Forest. Four months ago, they dismantled them 4-0 at Villa Park to book a place in the Europa League final, a night that underlined the gulf between the sides.
That game, though, already feels like it belongs to a different era.
Six of Villa’s starting XI from that semi-final, and nine of the 16 players who featured, have since left the club. The spine, the dressing-room voices, the familiar patterns – all reshaped in one turbulent summer. Villa Park remains the same imposing stage, but the cast has changed.
The question is whether the aura has survived the overhaul.
Glasner’s grip on Emery
If Villa’s home record against Forest offers comfort, Glasner’s presence in the away dugout rips it away.
The Austrian has become Emery’s problem manager, a recurring nightmare in the opposite technical area. Across seven meetings – all during Glasner’s spell at Crystal Palace – he has never lost to the Spaniard. The aggregate scoreline is savage: 19-4 in Glasner’s favour.
Two of those wins came at Villa Park, during a 41-match home run in which Villa were otherwise unbeaten. When everyone else left Birmingham empty-handed, Glasner walked away with points and a plan that Emery could not crack.
This is not a quirk of a small sample size. Glasner has only once put together a longer unbeaten run against a fellow manager in his career, and he has never enjoyed a better record against a counterpart without tasting defeat. For Emery, this is the longest winless streak he has ever endured against another coach.
Forest arrive winless from their opening three league games for the first time in their Premier League history. On the surface, that reads like vulnerability. Glasner may see something else: an ideal platform. A familiar stadium, a familiar opponent, a familiar script.
A test of narratives
So the stage is set.
Villa, buoyed by Europe but still goalless in the league, chasing fluency and fighting off the ghosts of last season’s slow start. Forest, stuck in first gear domestically, but led by a manager who has repeatedly found the weak spot in Emery’s armour.
Villa Park has been a fortress against Forest. Glasner has been kryptonite to Villa.
One of those trends has to crack.
