Aston Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa boasting 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? We will find out very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
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.
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 likewise made four changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He has done a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight 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 remaining.
