Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this Premier League clash between Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop 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 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.
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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well 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 - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision 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 Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
