Nottingham Forest have their biggest game of the season tomorrow evening.
Vitor Pereira’s men take on Aston Villa at the City Ground in the first leg of the Europa League semi-finals.
Opta’s supercomputer has made Villa the slight favourites to beat Forest, however, when these two sides met each other earlier this month, it was a score draw.
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Unai Emery has been speaking to the media ahead of the clash and he’s been very complimentary of Nottingham Forest.
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Unai Emery says Aston Villa have a 50% chance of beating Nottingham Forest
Emery believes his Aston Villa side have a 50% chance of beating Nottingham Forest, as he heaped praise on Pereira’s men.
“But now in the semi-final it’s 50-50 for both teams and very important for both teams,” the Villa boss admitted.
“Nottingham Forest have history in Europe winning the Champions League and we have our history as well but not recently. Recently we want both teams to keep doing something important in Europe.”
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Emery added: “It’s the same, but not the same in that you have to manage each moment. Even the first half of the first leg and the second half of the second leg – they are different and I expect it to be a lot.
“Why? Because they are performing very good, playing with confidence from the last two matches and they were amazing.
“They scored four and five goals in the matches they played. In the Europa League as well as – being competitive and how in the last two rounds they competed fantastically.”
Forest certainly have a newfound sense of confidence, which was on show last week as they thumped Sunderland 5-0.
Morgan Gibbs-White has been in particularly good form, as no player in the Premier League has scored more than his 10 goals in 2026.
Gibbs-White has also registered six goal involvements in the Europa League, so he’ll be hoping to add to that tally tomorrow evening.
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