Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing 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? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced 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 starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 likewise made four changes to their matchday 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced 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 fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, 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
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 shifted, including the manager twice and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
