Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. 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 likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat 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 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 forged it into a strong side, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where 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 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 bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
