Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight fixture between Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game following a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to secure all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting lineup who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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.
Substitutes: 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 fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed 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 very good professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place 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 Premier League 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 remaining.
