Aston Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult 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 a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The team news will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 matchday squad after a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Nottingham 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 great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
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 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 outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
