Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
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 flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved 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 team news will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect 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 persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
