Why Ola Aina is the driving force behind Forest's incredible form

As Nottingham Forest fly high in the league, Ali Tweedale of Opta Analyst takes a closer look at how Ola Aina's pivotal performances have played a key role in their incredible form this season. 

Nottingham Forest have been one of the best and most consistent teams in the Premier League this season.

There’s no question they deserve to be third in the table, mere goal difference separating them from second place.

Title race

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
1	Liverpool LIV	21	+30	50
2	Arsenal ARS	22	+22	44
3	Nott'm Forest NFO	22	+11	44
4	Chelsea CHE	22	+17	40

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But their lofty position is also in part circumstantial.

They wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for some gross inconsistency on the part of several of the biggest clubs in England. Champions and tipped by many to win the title coming into the season, Manchester City, have suffered an unprecedented dip, while Chelsea won this week for the first time in six matches, a run that put suggestions of a title challenge to bed.

Even Arsenal, currently above Forest in second, have won at most three games in a row all season, and would certainly have hoped to be going at more than two points per match by this stage of the campaign.

Much like when Leicester City won the league, Forest are taking advantage of other, more widely fancied teams slipping up around them.

It also wouldn’t have taken much for things to be very different. Forest don’t pass their opponents off the park, instead capitalising on the chances they do get to attack with ruthless efficiency.

There’s nothing wrong with that - clearly it’s working for them - but it does mean that there are fine margins for them. They have to ride their luck at times. They have recorded eight single-goal victories this season, more than any other Premier League team.

As a result of head coach Nuno Espirito Santo’s preference to allow the opposition to dominate possession and territory, they don’t tend to create more chances than their opponents. Only the Premier League’s current bottom five have generated a lower Expected Goals (xG) total this season than the 28.2 of Forest.

Opta’s Expected Points table, which reflects xG data, showing where everyone should be in the table based on the quality of chances they have created and conceded, has Forest in ninth.

That’s not to say they should actually be ninth rather than third, but does indicate that their current position is due to their efficiency - and maybe a little luck - rather than creating more than their opponents.

For this way of playing to work, you need to ride your luck, and you need key moments to go your way. Much like it did for Leicester in 2015/16.

And when it comes to key moments at the back and last-ditch defending, they are top of the pile.

In Matz Sels Forest have a goalkeeper with the highest save percentage (74.4 per cent) in the Premier League this season (min. 10 appearances), but the Belgian has also been beaten a fair few times without being punished. Forest’s outfielders have made a competition-high seven goal-line clearances this season.

Clearing the ball off your own goal line is obviously a positive in that it prevents a goal, but there’s an argument it is also a sign of a failure elsewhere. An opponent has had shot which has beaten the goalkeeper, and but for a last-gasp intervention by a desperate defender, a goal would have been conceded.

But that is part of the fun, part of the thrill, of the goal-line clearance.

It’s not a category traditionally dominated by the best and most cultured defenders; at the top of the list are those you’d most associate with backs-to-the-ball defending and withstanding relentless pressure.

In Premier League seasons for which this data is available (since 2013/14), Ben Mee has made more goal-line clearances (14) than anyone else, just ahead of former Burnley team-mate James Tarkowski (13), now of Everton, Tyrone Mings (11), Conor Coady and Lewis Dunk (both 10). Not bad players but defenders who have done a lot of, well, defending.

This season, Forest have the most effective and important goal-line defender in the Premier League in Ola Aina.

Nobody has made more goal-line clearances this season than the Forest defender (three), and all three of his have been crucial to the team’s result.

Back in November, he cleared a Dara O’Shea header off the line in Forest’s 1-0 win over Ipswich Town. Assuming everything else stays the same, then without that block, Forest would have dropped two points.

Then, in Forest’s last two matches, Aina has made more crucial interventions. He cleared a goal-bound shot from Mohamed Salah in the 1-1 draw at home to Liverpool with the scores level in the dying minutes…

…and in Forest’s 3-2 win over Southampton last week, only an Aina goal-line clearance denied Saints a draw, having fought back from 3-0 down.

In total, Aina’s three goal-line clearances have essentially earned Forest five points: wins rather than draws with Ipswich and Southampton, and a draw rather than a defeat against Liverpool. Five points from goal-line clearances is more than any other player in the league.

In fact, Everton are the only team whose players have earned more points through goal-line clearances in the Premier League this season (six) than Aina. With five goal-line clearances, Newcastle United’s players have won as many points (five) as Aina alone.

Points saved through goal-line clearances

So, is this a success or a failure of the system? Aina getting back to clear the ball off the line clearly helped the team on each occasion, but does the fact he was needed at all reflect a problem elsewhere?

Most goal-line clearances come at set-pieces, simply because they represent one of very few times in the match when outfielders are needed that close to goal, or even behind a goalkeeper. All three of Aina’s goal-line clearances this season have come at corners, and all three have come at the back post.

His job at defensive corners is to stand in the middle of the goal and move on to the back post if he isn’t able to challenge for the first contact. Having him move to the back post has proved incredibly valuable.

Andy Parslow, a first-team set-piece coach in the Championship, says that if you were to pick out a weakness in Forest’s defensive setup, it would be one that increases the chances of Aina being needed to rescue them. In that sense, Aina’s heroics have been to some degree by design.

“Forest, like most teams these days, go with more of a zonal system,” Parslow tells Opta Analyst. “Probably the most common way of beating that structure is getting a near-post flick towards the far post, and either getting a tap-in or the flick goes in directly.

“The last player who doesn’t mark - in this case Aina - takes up that position to mitigate against the weakness in the structure. So if their system is breached, they’ve got a safety net.

"You set up at every defensive set-piece with the intention of winning the first contact and dealing with it at source, but it would be incredibly naïve to expect that you’re going to win every first contact. If you’re going to accept that, you might as well protect against it, and that’s what Forest are doing with Aina.”

Putting a player on the post these days doesn’t look like it once did. “It doesn’t necessarily look like a player standing with their shoulder resting on the post,” as Parslow puts it, and Aina’s role is more than just standing on the back post.

If he can’t impact the initial ball in, he moves back to protect the back part of the goal, and he has the skillset to do that job exceptionally well. His clearance against Southampton last Sunday was an impressive display of excellent reading of the flight of the ball, athleticism, and quick reactions.

He is incredibly well-suited to doing this job; it’s not simply a case of the ball hitting him, but instead a proactive role that requires real skill.

So, given how important Aina’s goal-line clearances have been this season, why doesn’t every team put players on the posts?

“There’s no perfect system,” says Parslow. “A player on the post is an extra layer of protection, but everything is a trade-off. If you have a player in Aina’s position, you might be losing a blocker and that could be the player who stops the opponent getting the near-post flick in the first place.”

Forest won’t like that Aina has been needed quite so much, and they will presumably work on winning that near-post flick more consistently to ensure that he isn’t involved at defensive corners quite so much for the rest of the season.

But ultimately, if the ball stays out of the Forest net, then it’s fair to conclude that their system at defensive set-pieces has worked. Aina is a key part of that, and if he keeps producing goal-saving clearances at key moments, he’ll only be boosting Forest’s chances of the fine margins going their way.

If everything continues to fall into place, there’s no reason they shouldn’t maintain their push for Champions League football.

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