Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game following a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to secure all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 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.
Forest have likewise 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan 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, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
