Villa 2 – 1 Forest; A highly encouraging win and moving UP, UP, UP

Yes, I know.
Some of you will be on me like a ton of bricks, because you thought we were poor.
Indeed we were, at times.
Forest put us under massive pressure early on and it took us the best part of fifteen minutes to get to grips with the game. But we managed to get the first goal against the run of play after Albert adomah rounded the keeper following a nice through ball from Kodjia.
If I was Mark Warburton, I’d have been well annoyed, but that takes me to my point later.

We then dominated, I thought, until half time, where Warburton no doubt got the hairdryer out and Forest came out a much better side.
So much so, that they had us on the back foot and duly scored, after some very poor defending all round.
Fair play to Daryl Murphy though. He had to work hard for his goal, after having had little to work with.
We might view it as poor defending, but the lad did well and deserves credit for his goal.
That said, we did look somewhat ponderous and slow.

And so the game rolled on, where I was extremely worried that we might bottle it, yet again.
Only for Conor Hourihane to bend one into the net from a free kick, for us to take a 2-1 lead.

We created further chances, but then went through a decidedly dodgy patch in the 80th minute on, where the defence looked like they were totally panicking. Experience doesn’t get you through severe pressure, does it?
Still, we held them off and Forest’s momentum fairly quickly ran out of steam.

Ok, you might say Forest are no great shakes.
But the point here is that we drew this same fixture last season and so we’ve gained 2 points.

Last season, as soon as the oppo scored, so we seemed to fall apart.
That certainly didn’t happen in this game and we continued to knock the ball around nicely at times.

One thing I will say, is that their No 5 was one dirty bastard. He pushed, pulled and elbowed players all over the place and was lucky to get away with only a booking.
I’d have loved him at the Villa thirty or forty years ago. A proper player.

Anyway, we face Burton Albion away next, with Bolton to follow.
Burton might be a bit tricky, but Bolton are looking like whipping boys.
Another six points in the bag and things are looking decidedly better.

Get your heads around that, those who aren’t quite seeing it yet.
That’s not a dig at anyone in particular, but something that I can see causing some decent debate.

To be honest, I still have some doubts about how we’ll fare against the better sides, but that’s for another day.
And I can only enjoy a Villa win, as that’s all it’s about for me.

My Derby mate promised me they’d do Blues today.
He’s in for a round of proverbials tomorrow.