Ollie Watkins celebrated his 250th appearance for Aston Villa with a goal in a 3-1 win against a wretched Nottingham Forest who are slipping into deep relegation trouble.<\/p>\n
Watkins continued his impressive form with his fourth strike in three over the festive period to spearhead an 11th straight home win for Villa.<\/p>\n
John McGinn then struck twice after the break, including one from 35 yards, as Unai Emery’s men recorded their best streak at Villa Park since 1990.<\/p>\n
It got them back to winning ways after their midweek humbling at Arsenal, moving into second ahead of the rest of the weekend’s Premier League action, but more importantly opened up a 12-point gap over fifth-placed Chelsea as they tightened their grip on Champions League qualification.<\/p>\n
Forest briefly got back into the game through Morgan Gibbs-White’s goal but they were poor in slipping to a fourth successive defeat – their worst run in the Premier League since late 2023 amid a run of form which saw Steve Cooper sacked.<\/p>\n
It might be too soon for Sean Dyche to be linked with suffering a similar fate, but the clouds are gathering and Tuesday’s visit to fellow strugglers West Ham, managed by former boss Nuno Espirito Santo, now takes on extra significance.<\/p>\n
The Hammers’ relegation fears deepened as they crashed to a humiliating 3-0 defeat at previously winless Wolves.<\/p>\n
The result was all but cemented in the first half as an early goal from Jhon Arias was followed by a Hwang Hee-chan penalty and superb Mateus Mane strike.<\/p>\n
It made for a miserable return to Molineux for former Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo, who is struggling to revive the fortunes of the Hammers and now under considerable pressure.<\/p>\n
The London side remain four points adrift of safety in 18th place the Premier League after a run of nine games without a win.<\/p>\n
Given that the tenures of his predecessors Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter proved shortlived, the Portuguese \u2013 already sacked by Nottingham Forest this season \u2013 may not survive much longer.<\/p>\n
For once bottom side Wolves were not the ones doing the soul searching as they claimed a much-deserved first victory of the season.<\/p>\n
Brighton soared to eighth place in the Premier League by snapping a six-match winless run with a comfortable 2-0 success over second-bottom Burnley.<\/p>\n
Georginio Rutter gave the Seagulls a first-half lead on a bitterly-cold afternoon at the Amex Stadium before Yasin Ayari doubled the advantage early in the second period.<\/p>\n
Substitute Loum Tchaouna came close to halving the deficit but Scott Parker’s struggling Clarets remain six points from Nottingham Forest in 17th after their wait for a top-flight victory stretched to 11 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ollie Watkins celebrated his 250th appearance for Aston Villa with a goal in a 3-1 win against a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-225568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}