• Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa meet in an all-English Europa League semi-final, with Vitor Pereira's men hosting the first leg at the City Ground.

• These sides drew 1-1 in Nottingham just a couple of weeks ago in the Premier League.

• Forest beat Porto 2-1 on aggregate to reach the semi-finals, while Villa thrashed Bologna 7-1 across two legs in a dominant quarter-final display.

📂 Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa Cheat Sheet

Pending...

📈 Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa Form & Tactics

After a poor start to life under Vitor Pereira, Nottingham Forest have found their feet in recent weeks, and have continued to build momentum. Their recent Premier League form has been incredibly encouraging - they are unbeaten in their last four league matches and have pulled off some impressive results in that stretch. They beat Tottenham 3-0, Burnley 4-1 and Sunderland 5-0. That has put them five points clear of the bottom three.

They have even done well to balance European proceedings, and the 2-1 aggregate win over Porto in the quarter-finals showed how Forest can be resilient and grind out results, especially after beating Midtjylland on penalties in the previous round.

Aston Villa come into this semi-final as the tournament favourites, but they cannot afford to underestimate this Forest side. With that being said, Villa’s European run has been much more convincing this season, and they came away with a 7-1 aggregate win over Bologna in the previous round. Unai Emery’s men have won 11 of their 12 matches in the Europa League this season, highlighting how they have easily balanced midweek matches with domestic games. Villa are eight points clear in fifth, so it looks incredibly likely that they will be playing in the Champions League next season.

📔 Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa Formation & Team News

Vitor Pereira is expected to stick with a similar eleven to that which beat Sunderland at the weekend, but Morato could partner Nikola Milenkovic if Jair Cunha is deemed unfit. He was forced off after 50 minutes against the Black Cats, so could join Murillo in the treatment room. Nicolas Dominguez could also partner Elliot Anderson instead of Ibrahim Sangare. Igor Jesus and Chris Wood started in a strike partnership at the weekend, and they both got on the scoresheet.

Amadou Onana was a surprise exclusion from the matchday squad for Villa at the weekend, as the Belgian international has suffered a fresh injury setback. With Boubacar Kamara still recovering from injury, Lamare Bogarde could partner Youri Tielemans in midfield again midweek, but Douglas Luiz will also be in contention to start. Ian Maatsen was an unused substitute against Fulham, and he could be included in the starting eleven midweek to afford Lucas Digne a rest.

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