Aston Villa against Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations 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 also made four changes 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured 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 - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott 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:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced 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 charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
