Aston Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations 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.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done 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 shaped it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against 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 done as well 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
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
