Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa boasting 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 a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 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.
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 great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped 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 - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
