Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 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.
Nottingham 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.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
The midfielder 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 commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year 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 charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
