Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are 17th 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 beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa having one of the best home records 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 be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup 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.
Nottingham 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.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps 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."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The issue 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 persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is charged 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 remaining.
