Nottingham Forest defeated Aston Villa at the City Ground on Saturday to climb to fourth place in the Premier League.
The Reds came from behind to win with Nikola Milenkovic scoring and Anthony Elanga bagging for the first time since February.
Forest players took to Instagram afterwards to speak of their delight at the win and the dressing room looks like a very positive place to be right now.
For Elanga it was a welcome return to form as he once again had to settle for a place on the substitutes bench.
Elanga raved about Villa goalkeeper Emi Martinez after the game and without his input the Reds might have won more comfortably.
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Theo Walcott wowed by Anthony Elanga during Forest win over Aston Villa
The Reds claimed back-to-back wins once again this season, capitalising on the brilliant victory at Old Trafford last time out.
For Elanga it was obvious that he felt relief after scoring his first goal for 10 months and he will now hope to get some confidence back.
The 22-year-old has been a good signing since signing for Forest for £15 million from Manchester United but he’s not been at his best during the current campaign.
On Saturday, he returned to form, however, and fired home a late winner before receiving praise from Walcott on Match of the Day.
He said: “They did really work. Elanga is an absolute handful. He gets himself into that position. I do think it’s a foul in the build-up but I love that they just played on. Elanga does really well to just get in there and not hang back outside of the box.”
Elanga can actually draw inspiration from Walcott as a player
Walcott went to a World Cup as a 16-year-old but didn’t manage to get on the pitch during that particular tournament.
The winger did enjoy a brilliant career though and his all-action game was heavily reliant on him using a great amount of pace to get by defenders.
At 22, Elanga isn’t the finished article and perhaps he can take some inspiration from watching old videos of how Walcott used to play.
This season one critique has been that the player doesn’t always challenge his full-back enough and he’s not quite been at his best in that sense.
Walcott so often kept things simple and made his remit to beat the opposition full-back as often as he could when he was on the pitch.
Elanga needs to get back to doing exactly that and hopefully, this goal can spark an upward trajectory when it comes to his form.
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