Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Introduction
Welcome everyone 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 soaring this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa possessing 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 team news will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 likewise made four adjustments 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, 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 likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying 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 very good professional, very dedicated. 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, committing the money we need."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked 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.
