Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, 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 setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa boasting 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 a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting lineup who were defeated by 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.
Nottingham Forest have also made four changes 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder 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 stated:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The issue 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 would need to."
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 altered, 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
