Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also made four changes 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good 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 convinced to sign him, committing the money we need."
League Context
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 twice and the current boss is tasked 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 remaining.
