Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for the visitors to come away with 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 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.
Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments to their starting 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 commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably 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 - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect 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 playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
