Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this Premier League fixture between Aston 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 sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team 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 be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 also made four changes to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested 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 played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future 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 as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche 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 above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
