3 factors behind Ola Aina’s centre-back shift against Aston Villa

Super Eagles defender Ola Aina delivered an impressive individual performance by playing 90 minutes as centre-back in the club’s 2-1 win over Aston Villa at Villa Park on Saturday, Afrik-Foot reports.

The Nigerian defender had featured in every Forest’s games this season in his familiar right wing-back position, and had been expected to do so again against Unai Emery’s Villa.

However, the pre-match discovery of injuries to Jair Cunha and Nikola Milenkovic forced Glasner to redesign his entire defensive shape less than 24 hours before kick-off, and Aina became the solution the Austrian head coach turned to.

The 2-1 victory that followed was Glasner’s first Premier League win as Forest boss, and Aina’s individual performance announced a defensive option Chelle can now factor into his Super Eagles plans.

3 factors behind Ola Aina’s centre-back shift

1. Glasner had less than 24 hours to solve an injury problem

The first factor is the nature of the tactical decision. Glasner has confirmed publicly that both Cunha and Milenkovic, Forest’s two established centre-back partnership, were only ruled out on the eve of the Villa fixture after medical staff received the results of the scans on Friday evening.

“The circumstances we have yesterday, it was in the evening that I got the results of the scans and, all of a sudden, both centre-backs couldn’t play,” Glasner told Forest TV after the game.

Glasner chose to personally walk to Aina and Ousmane Diomande’s hotel rooms to inform them of the change and inviting their tactical buy-in before finalising the plans.

“I knocked on Ola and Ousmane’s door and told them that they would start tomorrow in a back three,” Glasner added.

“Especially with Ola, I had to ask him if he can imagine that this could work and he said ‘I can’.”

The mutual trust shown by the players and the coach is what made the emergency deployment a success.

2. Ola Aina is a very versatile player.

The second factor is Aina’s impressive player profile. The 29-year-old has spent his entire career operating in the right-back and wing-back positions across Chelsea, Hull, Torino and Forest, but his physical attributes have always capped his ceiling required to operate through the middle at a high level.

His Serie A education at Torino included occasional right centre-back cameos when Walter Mazzarri deployed the club in a 3-5-2 shape, meaning the Villa Park performance was not a blind first attempt at the position.

Aina’s understanding of when to step out of the defensive line, when to press aggressively into midfield, and when to drop deeper as the last line of defence had been quietly refined across his previous Italian chapter.

3. The Diomande and Murillo partnership provided the required tactical cover

The third factor is the specific composition of Forest’s improvised back three itself.

Aina was flanked on his left by Diomande as the central defensive pivot, making his full Premier League debut, with Murillo playing as the left-sided centre-back despite the Brazilian’s knee discomfort that Glasner said had required a personal declaration of fitness from the defender himself.

Outside Aina on the touchline, Munoz was assigned the right wing-back responsibilities as the specific attacking outlet that also provided defensive cover on the flank, allowing the Nigerian to focus almost entirely on his own defensive assignment rather than having to sprint across to close down Villa attackers.

Diomande’s calm distribution and positional intelligence at the central pivot gave Aina the space to focus on his own right-sided defensive assignment rather than having to cover for a debutant partner’s mistakes.

For Aina personally, the Villa performance also secures his Forest starting shirt regardless of Cunha and Milenkovic’s fitness.

A defender who can operate at right wing-back, right-back, left wing-back or centre-back is three squad slots in one, and Glasner will now feel comfortable rotating Aina across whichever specific role the fixture list demands.