Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups 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 starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation 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, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, 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 accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
