Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this Premier League clash between Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Forest 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 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 confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven 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 likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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 commented on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed 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 respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan 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 need."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, 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 accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
