Aston Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are 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 a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a tough task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"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 a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
What a difference a year makes. 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 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 outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
