Aston Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 changes 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.
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 fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed 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 to go.
