Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Villa and Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat 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 the visitors to come away with 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 perhaps 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.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him all we can 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 are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
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 changed, including the manager twice and the current boss is charged 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 bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
