Nottingham Forest injury news has taken a turn barely 24 hours after the Reds’ first win of the season, with Nikola Milenkovic already ruled out of next weekend’s meeting with Coventry City at the City Ground.
The Serbia international was a late withdrawal from Saturday’s 2-1 victory at Villa Park with a hamstring problem, and Oliver Glasner confirmed afterwards that the centre-back will miss Forest’s final fixture before the international break. Jair Cunha, who pulled out of the same squad with a similar issue, is rated a doubt rather than a definite absentee.
Glasner on the Nottingham Forest injury news after Villa Park
Speaking to reporters after the win, and quoted by the Nottingham Post, the head coach was clear about the more serious of the two.
“Nikola is a little bit more serious,” Glasner said. “He will also miss Coventry. We are hopeful that he can be back after the international break. Let’s say this is the first time I feel three weeks without a game is good.
“Jair, we have to assess. We are hopeful that it could work for the Coventry game. But again, you can’t cheat your muscles and we have to be cautious. Let’s see. But Nikola will definitely miss next week’s game. With Jair, we are still hopeful.”
The timing was brutal. Scan results came back late on Friday evening, less than 24 hours before kick-off in the West Midlands, and both defenders were pulled out after feeling tightness in training. Glasner was left reorganising his back line on the eve of the game.
Murillo played through it
There was a third name on the treatment table that Forest kept quiet until full time. Murillo had been a significant doubt of his own with knee trouble, yet the Brazilian declared himself available and completed the full 90 minutes.
“Murillo, now I can mention it,” Glasner revealed. “He also was a big question mark because he had some pain in his knees on Friday in training. And he said, ‘No, gaffer, I can and will play’.”
That is the sort of detail that tends to buy a player a lot of goodwill on the terraces, and it landed in the same week Glasner had publicly challenged Murillo to raise his standards.
A first real test of Forest’s defensive depth
Losing two centre-backs on the eve of an away trip to Unai Emery’s side would have derailed plenty of Forest teams. Instead, Milenkovic’s absence handed Ousmane Diomande his first Premier League start in the middle, with Ola Aina shifted across to operate as the right-sided centre-back in a makeshift unit.
It held. Villa were restricted to relatively little for long spells, Liam Delap struck 45 seconds into the second half for his first Forest goal, and Igor Jesus came off the bench to settle it late after Alysson had levelled.
This was always going to be the moment Forest found out what they had. Morato and Zach Abbott were both loaned out on deadline day, leaving the defensive pool thinner than it looked in July, and the first time it was properly stretched the replacements coped.
Coventry are next at the City Ground, and there is a familiar face in their ranks: Taiwo Awoniyi, sold by Forest to the Sky Blues in August, could return to the ground where he scored some of the most important goals of the club’s Premier League era. Glasner will hope to have Jair available to face him. As for Milenkovic, the three-week gap that follows now looks less like an interruption and more like a gift.
