Aston Villa chase destiny against resurgent Nottingham Forest in all-English showdown

Unai Emery relays instructions on the training ground. Photograph: Matthew Childs/Action Images/Reuters

For Forest, it is a fourth major European semi-final and first since 1984. “This week I went to the city centre and I saw the statue of the big manager at this club,” Pereira says of the tribute to Brian Clough off Old Market Square. “He did something fantastic that stays in the heart of these people until now, and for the new generations. We will try to do our best to emulate what he did.”

Forest are under pressure to stay up – Friday’s 5-0 win at Sunderland could yet prove pivotal in that fight – and such has been the focus, their owner Evangelos Marinakis’s priorities so explicit, they have been somewhat liberated in Europe. They blew away Fenerbahce in Pereira’s first game, a second string impressed at Midtjylland after losing the first leg, and they then overcame Porto in the quarter-finals, Morgan Gibbs-White scoring the decisive goal.

Villa will be their toughest test yet but Forest are in rude health. They held Villa to a 1-1 draw this month, Morgan Rogers and Watkins missing chances to take advantage of one of Forest’s flattest performances under Pereira. Forest are unbeaten in eight matches and, since Pereira’s arrival in February, they have scored more goals than anyone in the Premier League. Nobody has scored more than Gibbs-White’s 10 this calendar year, while Chris Wood’s return has allowed Pereira to shift approach and find joy with an orthodox 4-4-2.

Villa are on course to qualify for the Champions League for the second time in three seasons and this tie represents a third straight major semi-final in three years. The first, a Conference League tie against Olympiakos, another team in Marinakis’s stable, was supposed to segue into a final but ended with Villa on the wrong end of a 6-2 aggregate defeat synonymous with Ayoub El Kaabi running amok.

Vítor Pereira (right) gets ready to talk tactics with his players. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA

This time last season they were overawed by Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-finals, succumbing to a 3-0 defeat. Both of those occasions, in between which Villa pushed Paris Saint-Germain all the way in a pulsating Champions League quarter-final, have gnawed at Villa’s senior players. “They were big nights for us, big moments in which we haven’t delivered,” McGinn, the Villa captain, said in November. “We have that determination in the back of our heads to prove this team we have built over the past five or six years is worth more than a quarter-final, worth more than a semi-final. I think until we do that there will always be questions asked.”

Forest will play interrogators against Villa on Thursday and, if Emery’s side prevail, they will be favourites to end their 30-year trophy drought next month. “We have always hit a new milestone each year, but this year would definitely be the best season should we do that and cement the Champions League,” Watkins says. “That feeling of getting Champions League football a few years ago was unbelievable, but to lift a trophy ... personally I have never done it. A few of the boys have won trophies and I am very envious of them.”