Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging 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 set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 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.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic 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 moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.