Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight clash between Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent 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 top players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to 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 Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third 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 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 to go.
