OPINION
All Aston Villa fans surely relieved that they’re unlikely to come face-to-face with their former frontman Lewis Grabban when their side play Nottingham Forest on Wednesday.
Forest manager Martin O’Neill heavily hinted that the 31-year-old won’t have recovered from his Achilles injury in time to feature against the Villans despite the boss claiming his side need him.
“Lewis is definitely making very good progress. I know that the international break is just around the corner, I think the feeling is that, if he wants to come back and wants to be as pain free as possible, we will look at that,” said O’Neill, as quoted by the Nottingham Post.
“But I also know that he is a player we need and I would like to have him in the side as soon as possible. We will look at that as well, too.
“He is a player we need and we would like to have him in the side, because games soon start to run out. He is our leading goal scorer, he can find the net and that is something we very, very much need in the closing weeks.
“It may come a bit too early for him, again. I was hoping that he might not have been ruled out last weekend. I don’t think he will be involved. When I say it is touch and go, I mean we are at a point where the coming weekend might be a possibility.”
Grabban has proven to be a key player for Forest this season, he is their leading scorer with 16 goals in 33 outings and is more than capable of causing the Villans damage.
The forward is a powerful presence up front for O’Neill’s side and is a clinical force in the Championship.
Villans fans are no doubt very aware of how good Grabban is, when you consider that scored eight goals in 18 outings for them last season after joining them in January for the second-half of the 2017/18 campaign.
While Dean Smith’s side are no doubt confident about getting a decent result against Forest after beating Birmingham City on Sunday, a large number of Villans supporters would have still been concerned about how their side’s defence would have coped with the Forest attacker.
However given O’Neill’s update, it seems all Villans fans can breath a sigh of relief as Grabban doesn’t look like he’ll have the chance to be an issue on Wednesday.