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There's no getting away from Unai Emery's record in the Europa League.
The Aston Villa manager has won the successor to the UEFA Cup four times with two different clubs and has now taken another two to the final. In the space of just 12 years, Emery has become the most successful manager of the Europa League and nobody else gets close.
They saved their best performance of the season for the night when it was needed the most. Emery's players stood up to be counted and won 4-0, steamrolling the tie into oblivion and taking Villa to their first European final since 1982.
Captain John McGinn moved himself up a rung or two in the Villa legend stakes. Emi Buendia played his best match in a Villa shirt by far. Ollie Watkins was flawless up front, Pau Torres imperious at the back.
Forest manager Vitor Pereira spoke to TNT Sports after the second leg at Villa Park, clearly crestfallen. He criticised referee Glenn Nyberg and listed the players Forest were missing through injury.
None of it was magnanimous, but a lot of it was true. Pereira named Morgan Gibbs-White on the bench, and we'll never know if he'd have been brought on to take a penalty or not at all. There's not a team in England that wouldn't miss him.
Villa's injury problems have eased, but they were without midfielders Boubacar Kamara, who has been out since January, and Amadou Onana. Their absence became Emery's secret weapon.
Defender Victor Lindelof was selected alongside Youri Tielemans, and it proved a brilliant decision.
The Swede unsurprisingly held his own. He predictably played in midfield when Villa didn't have the ball and dropped in at centre-back when they attacked, releasing both full-backs to get forward. Emery, often, will use his right-back or left-back in a three in possession. The one kink in Lindelof's role was a big tactical win for the Villa boss. When Stefan Ortega and Forest's centre-backs had the ball, Lindelof stuck to striker Chris Wood like a limpet; road closed.
In terms of attitude, approach and application, Villa's performance couldn't have been further from the shambolic defeat against Tottenham Hotspur at Villa Park five days earlier.
Emery, who is ranked at no.9 in FourFourTwo's list of the best managers in the world right now, made seven changes to his team ahead of the Spurs match but the anaemic display they served up that night was infuriating for some supporters, given the need to get over the line in the race for a Champions League place.
Emery looked livid on the touchline but allowed the game to play out essentially without intervention. He was bullish after the fact, and there's an argument that Thursday's Europa League success was vindication for the choices he made at the weekend. He is, after all, the master of the Europa League.
To write this off as the common or garden Emery masterclass in Europe would be to overlook the precarious position Villa were in. Their progress belongs to him, certainly, but there was a huge gamble involved that was more about faith than genius. The reaction of the supporters during and after the game against Spurs wasn't without previous. Villa were out of form and they were – they are – not really in a position to allow winnable league matches to pass them by.
There's an intense yearning at Villa Park that this ageing Villa team should get its moment, for Emery, for McGinn and Watkins, for the people behind the scenes who've helped Villa from the Championship to the brink of a second season in the Champions League.
That yearning can manifest as fear and frustration, and the ability of the players to drag themselves out of the rut that was so deep against Spurs was not easy to believe in. The contrast from one game to the next has no recent precedent at Villa. It really was like watching two different teams.
Maybe Emery played the Europa League like a harpist. Maybe Villa hit the brakes just before their season dropped off a cliff.
They certainly didn't reach Istanbul the easy way, but in FourFourTwo's opinion the 'how' doesn't really matter now. Villa have two targets this season: to win the Europa League and to get back into the Champions League. Both of them are still possible and both can go to the wire if needed. It's been a remarkable season for Villa, if a slightly strange and often difficult one, and they still have work to do.
The Europa League final is a chance for Villa to make history, to become legends. McGinn has repeatedly urged his teammates to embrace the challenge and it would be the captain himself who is most deserving of lifting Villa's first trophy for 30 years.
But after Spurs, there's Burnley. Villa visit the Clarets on Sunday knowing that three points would put them within touching distance of the Champions League through their Premier League position.
If there was concern that Emery was putting all his league eggs in a single Burnley basket by disregarding the Spurs fixture, now's the time to produce the second part of the justification.
