Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The team news will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their starting 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.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly 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 struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting 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 on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League 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 to go.
