Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a tough task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: 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.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
