Aston Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs 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 promises to be a tough task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes 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.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, 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."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The situation 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 made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Form Guide
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 twice 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 to go.
