Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms 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? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Aston 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 also 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where 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 top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
