John McGinn rallies his Aston Villa teammates ahead of Nottingham Forest clash
Aston Villa captain John McGinn has called on his teammates to stay calm, cool and collected when they face Nottingham Forest on Monday evening.
Villa and Forest have had similar starts to the campaign, both making numerous summer signings but failing to deliver early on in the season.
McGinn highlighted that the Villans will need to keep their “cool” during Monday evening’s clash, where they will be at the will of a hostile Forest crowd.
“It will be another hostile environment, another tough place to go but it is somewhere we will be favourites to go and win,” said McGinn as quoted by the Express and Star.
“On Sunday (at Leeds) we kept cool heads and didn’t get sucked into anything the crowd or the opposition flung at us, so it is about staying cool, staying calm and hopefully taking our chances.”
Crucial.
Monday night’s fixture will be crucial for Steven Gerrard, if he fails to win, the Villa boss’s job could be in serious jeopardy.
To be fair to Gerrard, Villa are on a three-game unbeaten streak but his side has looked lacklustre going forward and their lack of goals is a concern.
A failure to beat relegation-bound Forest, however, would scream doubts into Gerrard’s ability to guide the team to better days.
The former Rangers boss has been backed heavily in the transfer market so there’s little excuse for him and Villa to not be further up the Premier League table.
Fans may be more convinced by his leadership if his side were playing enjoyable football, at the moment Villa have become bleak and boring, to say the least.
Gerrard will likely be given the benefit of the doubt, but the team’s performances need to improve drastically if he is to be considered as Villa’s main man to lead them forward in the coming years.
In other Aston Villa news, this teenage striker is making waves on the international stage and he could be set for big things at Villa Park.