Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to come away with 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 new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting lineup who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 also made four adjustments 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed 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 problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place 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 top-flight this season. Since being appointed 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.