Unai Emery's 8 Aston Villa lineup changes vindicated | OneFootball

A lot was made of the eight changes in the Aston Villa side from Unai Emery before the Nottingham Forest match. And this is understandable. After all, Villa have been strong since coming out of the international break and have put together good performances against Brighton and Preston North End.

The additional aspect of seeing goal scorer Marcus Rashford not in the starting XI and the changes at the back four made a lot of fans wary. That being said, it didn't take long, and the Villans found themselves ahead through a Morgan Rogers score. Then moments later, Donyell Malen doubled the lead.

Both goals happened in good build-up play as Youri Tielemans and Ian Maatsen supplied excellent final balls to the eventual goal scorers. More importantly, for the opening 20 minutes especially, it was the hosts who not only deserved the lead but also found a way to capitalize on their dominant spells of possession.

Sign of things to come for Aston Villa

As the half went on, Forest nearly came close to ending Villa's hopes of a clean sheet, but those efforts ended up trickling just wide of Emiliano Martínez and the goal. For as good as Emery's side started, those moments showed what this Nottingham group is capable of at any point. Still, for the most part, Villa continued where they left off against Brighton and didn't show noticeable rust considering the majority of positions that had seen a change.

There are always going to be a number of factors for the Villa boss to consider. Especially as the roster comes close to full health, the Spaniard will have a lot of difficult decisions with his selections. He has stated, however, that he believes in the ability of everyone, and he is putting his money where his mouth is. It wouldn't come as a surprise if Aston Villa were to have similar big overhauls moving forward, with their great amount of depth.