Nottingham Forest will look to win consecutive Premier League games for just the second time this season as they make the trip to Villa Park.

Last Saturday, Nuno Espirito Santo's team picked up an incredibly important three points as they comfortably swept West Ham United aside 2-0.

Unai Emery's Aston Villa will be desperate to defeat the Tricky Trees, who defeated them 2-0 earlier in the season.

But the question is, will the Portuguese boss look to mirror that performance in October under Steve Cooper? Or will he look to put his own twist on things? Nonetheless, there has to be one commonality, and that is to stop Ollie Watkins.

Felipe drops out of the starting XI

Brazilian defender Felipe has barely featured in the Premier League this season for Forest, making four appearances and starting just twice. The reason for this is because the defender picked up a knee injury in September, with his first game this season coming in December.

Last weekend, the 34-year-old came into the starting XI and played the full 90 minutes, helping Forest pick up just their fourth clean sheet of the campaign.

Although the former Atletico Madrid player didn't do anything wrong, he did look slightly off-the-pace at times, and that definitely cannot be the case when playing against Watkins, who has scored 13 goals and provided 12 assists in the Premier League this season.

In truth, West Ham didn't really test the rusty defender, as they only accumulated 0.50 xG in the tie, but Felipe did lose over half of his duels in the game, with him losing five of his nine battles.

Moussa Niakhate must start against Villa

Moussa Niakhate has been rather impressive this season over his 15 appearances, and he has proved to show up for the big occasion.

When Villa travelled to the City Ground in 2023, Niakhate was handed an 8.5/10 match rating by Nottinghamshire Live for his performance, which kept Watkins and the rest of the Villa attack quiet, with Sky Sports commentator Seb Hutchinson praising the defender for being "aggressive" on the Villa number 11.

Forest only had 27% of the ball in the tie, which meant that their defenders had to stay switched on for long spells without the ball, which isn't just physically tiring but also mentally draining.

However, the Senegal star was up to the challenge, and the table below shows his key stats from the tie.

Minutes

96

Clearances

8

Tackles

5

Duels won

5/5

Interceptions

2

As you can be seen above, Niakhate was extremely proactive throughout, defending his box brilliantly to clear the ball, reading the play to make interceptions, and engaging with the attackers to make five tackles and win all five of his duels.

To sum up his performance, Watkins lost 75% of his duels, failed to complete a single dribble, and was contained to just 0.30 xG, with Birmingham Live handing him a 6/10 rating and claiming he 'hardly had a sniff at goal'.

Furthermore, Felipe isn't the most athletic defender who can keep up with the speed of Watkins and potentially Moussa Diaby, unlike Niakhate, which is another reason why the former Mainz star must play ahead of the Brazilian.

But it wasn't just a one-off lucky performance from Niakhate, who has also pocketed the likes of Marcus Rashford this season, who is similar to Watkins in terms of his pace and strength at running in behind. Against Manchester United in December, the 27-year-old made four tackles and once again won 100% of his duels.

Simply put, Niakhate's performance against Villa could just determine the outcome of the tie this afternoon.