Villa v Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms 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? We will find out very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 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 starting 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.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
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:
"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 on loan 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 need."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
