Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game on the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a tough task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
