Express & Star

A bonkers night on road to Aston Villa promotion

Football supporters go to matches eager to see their team win. Football reporters go to matches hungry for something tasty to write about.

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Those of us fortunate enough to cover Villa last season rarely had to worry about the latter. This was a campaign of flying cabbages and controversies, which culminated in a record-breaking 10-match winning run and promotion through the play-offs.

The club’s route back to the Premier League could never be described as orthodox and the matches were rarely ever dull. Several will rank as among the most extraordinary Villa have ever been involved in, from the chaos of Steve Bruce’s last stand, through the fan assault on Jack Grealish and subsequent derby victory at Blues, through to the extraordinary scenes at Elland Road in what was supposedly a dead rubber.

Yet for sheer excitement and storylines, there was nothing which could quite compare with the events of Wednesday, November 28, 2018.

Aston Villa 5 Nottingham Forest 5 was football unleashed, the professional game reduced to a playground affair in which defending was largely forgotten and the final minutes saw the teams marauding forward, desperate to find a winner before the bell rang.

It was a night which had pretty much everything. Tammy Abraham snared most of the headlines after becoming the first Villa player to score four in a match for more than 30 years. Joe Lolley, a lifelong Villa fan, had a hand in all five of Forest’s goals including a stunning 30-yard strike of his own. Lewis Grabban bagged two for the visitors against the club with whom he had so nearly won promotion the previous year. Forest, who led on three occasions, also had Tobias Figueiredo sent off.

By the end a draw was fitting because for all the mayhem it was a match neither team deserved to win, as faults in both defences ultimately overshadowed thrilling attacking play.

With both teams in good form and hunting a place the Championship’s top six, a decent match had been anticipated, albeit no-one predicted just how decent. Forest arrived unbeaten in five, while Villa were on a run of three straight victories as the methods of Dean Smith, who had replaced Bruce as manager six weeks earlier, began to bear fruit.

Aston Villa's Tammy Abraham celebrates scoring his side's second goal of the game during the Sky Bet Championship match at Villa Park, Birmingham.

The most recent of those wins had been a 4-2 Second City derby triumph over Blues just three days earlier and the early indications were that Villa were struggling to reset after what had been a highly-charged, emotional day.

It took Grabban less than three minutes to put Forest ahead. Three minutes later the lead was doubled when Joao Carvalho took advantage of huge spaces in between the home defence.

Villa looked in big trouble against opponents on a run of three consecutive clean sheets. But like the boxer who suffers a flash knockdown in the opening round, it was almost as though the hosts never felt the blows. Abraham headed home Yannick Bolasie’s cross to pull one back on 11 minutes and after a quarter-of-an-hour the scores were level when the striker bundled home from close range.

Any notion things might settle down were dashed when Matty Cash put Forest back ahead in the 21st minute, before Abraham completed the first hat-trick of his career from the penalty spot.

The on-loan Chelsea striker had chances to put Villa ahead either side of half-time, but it was Forest who again got their noses ahead, Lolley firing home the goal of the night with home goalkeeper Orjan Nyland rooted to the spot.

Visiting boss Aitor Karanka must have hoped his team would finally hold an advantage, but instead Figueiredo picked up a second booking when he dived in late on John McGinn and Abraham headed home the resulting free-kick to make it 4-4.

When substitute Anwar El Ghazi stroked the ball into the top corner to score his first goal for Villa and put them ahead for the first time the points looked certain to be theirs. Grabban had other ideas, squeezing a shot inside Nyland’s near post with the keeper’s positioning once more questionable. Both Abraham and Ahmed Elmohamady saw goals ruled out in stoppage-time as a winner proved elusive.

In the immediate aftermath, neither manager was happy. “My goalkeeper hasn’t made a save,” said Smith, a comment which initially sounded an excuse but was actually a rather cutting review. Karanka was even more blunt. “I have never been involved in a match like this and never want to be again,” sighed the Spaniard.

There was no disputing Villa’s hero. Abraham had already scored five times since joining from Chelsea, but this felt like the night when he truly announced himself to Villa Park. He would go on to become the first striker since Andy Gray to score 25 goals in a season for the club. El Ghazi’s goal, though somewhat overlooked at the time, was also a significant moment for a player who became an important part of the late season promotion push.

Villa remained hugely entertaining but highly unreliable and less than a fortnight later would lose Grealish to lengthy injury. It required his return, combined with the January signings of Tyrone Mings and Kortney Hause, to transform Smith’s team into the machine capable of powering its way to promotion in the spring.