Alan Smith places the blame on one man for Nottingham Forest’s defeat to Aston Villa

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Nottingham Forest lost 2-1 to Aston Villa at Villa Park, and two minutes of madness ended the Reds’ chances of getting anything from the game.

Forest went into the game on the back of three straight Premier League wins. Manchester City, Ipswich and Manchester United were put to the sword and a seven-point gap had been produced on the chasing pack.

Now, the walls could close in, with Chelsea and Manchester City playing tomorrow and Villa now pulling to within six points of Forest in the race for next season’s Champions League.

Morgan Rogers and Donyell Malan scored two minutes apart in the first half, and that really gave Forest an uphill struggle in the grand scheme of things. Jota Silva pulled one back to rally the Nuno Espirito Santo team in the second half.

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Alan Smith blames the Nottingham Forest defeat to Aston Villa on one man

The co-commentator lauded Silva for his efforts when he was introduced from the bench but he felt that the game hinged on a decision taken by Espirito Santo over his team selection.

The Forest head coach is in serious credit, but Smith felt that he got something seriously wrong ahead of the game against Villa earlier tonight.

He said on Sky Sports: “You never quite know what he’s going to produce. It’s a lovely clean strike. They might just have given themselves too much to do. The back five backfired massively.”

Espirito Santo has decisions to make ahead of Everton test

Everton are in decent form at the moment under David Moyes and they will be no pushovers next weekend. However, it’s fair to say that the game is extremely winnable.

Espirito Santo will hope to have Ola Aina and Chris Wood back in contention for next week, with Taiwo Awoniyi also missing from the squad to take on Aston Villa.

If they’re not back in the squad, however, Espirito Santo has some decisions to make the five at the back situation is now open for debate.

Forest can take a lot of heart from the second half performance against Villa and the challenge now is to rest up and prepare to go again against Everton next week.