Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and 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 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game following a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team 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 announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Nott’m 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
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
