Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are coming into the game following a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Forest to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team 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 kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: 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.
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.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured 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 test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.