Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game following a setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting 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 maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 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 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, 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."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation 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 need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and the current boss is charged 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
