Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. Aston Villa 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 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
League Context
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 twice and the current boss is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
