Elanga seals comeback over Aston Villa and sends Nottingham Forest fourth | first division

Late goals from Nikola Milenkovic and Anthony Elanga secured victory for Nottingham Forest in this battle of the former European Cup champions and took them above Manchester City into the Champions League places.

Forest continued their best start to a season in three decades by coming back from Jhon Durán's opening goal for Villa, who are now winless in their last five. first division matches that have followed their Champions League matches.

So Forest, celebrating their 5,000th league game, can claim fourth place, at least until City play Manchester United on Sunday afternoon. Building on their notable victories at Anfield and Old Trafford this season, Nuno Espírito Santo has led them to eight league wins this season. Last season, that took them to their 36th game.

The old City Ground was shaken to its foundations when, after a tight first period in which Nuno's tactics helped nullify Villa's strengths, Forest's spirit took them to new heights. Finishing in the top four may be a stretch of credulity, but right now they're there on merit.

After Durán scored his 11th goal of the season, Forest thought they had tied it in the 81st minute when it took almost three minutes for the video assistant referee to determine that Elanga was half a shoulder offside as he ran onto Morgan Gibbs' pass -White before. Cross for Chris Wood to score. But they managed to equalize when Milenkovic, having scored his first Premier League goal in last Saturday's win over United, headed in Gibbs-White's cross from the right.

Six minutes later, Elanga completed the comeback when he finished from close range after another fluid move.

Tyrone Mings' second league start was frozen when, ill in the warm-up, he had to be replaced by Pau Torres. But while Villa's defensive shape remained unchanged, the fluidity of their midfield forced Forest to act with unorthodox diligence when out of possession.

With John McGinn settling in from his narrow position on the left, Forest right-back Ola Aina followed him inside, forcing retired central midfielder Nicolás Domínguez to fill the space outside where Lucas Digne can be so productive.

Durán, starting again in the Premier League with Ollie Watkins not fully fit, had a speculative volley but, in a stagnant first half, Forest gradually began to make some progress. With their best start in three decades behind them and a top-four spot potentially ahead of them, Forest were not lacking in confidence. Their game plan to block Villa seemed to be working. At the other end, Wood headed a Neco Williams cross across the goal, but Diego Carlos cleared before Dominguez could capitalize.

Elliot Anderson forced his way through the left inside channel only for his shot to deflect behind Boubacar Kamara. Racing the other way to take the corner, Anderson's delivery was headed just wide of the far post by Murillo.

Villa, with their legs tested but their morale bolstered by the midweek victory over RB Leipzig that puts them close to automatically qualifying for the Champions League round of 16, returned to contention. A referee other than Sam Barrott could have awarded them a penalty when Anderson kept pulling on Morgan Rogers' shirt as the pair ran towards the box. Ezri Konsa was unlucky to head a McGinn free kick wide of the far post.

Some testy exchanges between the two coaching teams reflected the tension early in the second half on either side of two notable Durán contributions. First, the Colombian completely missed his volley when a McGinn corner found him cleared at the far post. But then he responded immediately by turning and launching an overhead kick into the roof of the net.

His goal was preceded by one of the most remarkable saves you will see this season. After Gibbs-White took a corner kick from Anderson, Dominguez stooped to head toward goal from about four yards out. The ball appeared to go beyond Emiliano Martínez but he somehow reached back to hit the ball to the line. Then, Carlos cleared the rebound.

The importance of the save was underlined within a few minutes. Villa played an excellent possession game along the edge of the Forest area, from right to left, from Rogers to Durán, then to McGinn, to Digne and back to McGinn, whose cut-out cross was deftly headed by Durán, for his third goal. in a week.