Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult 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 maybe it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who were defeated by 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four adjustments 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying 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 very good professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
