Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
Aston 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 also made four adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably 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 challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible 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 featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
