Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game on the back of a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a tough task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The team news will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations 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.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have likewise 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 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 moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-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 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 need."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year 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.