Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game on the back of a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The team news will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who were defeated by 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 also made four changes 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.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, 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 on two occasions 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
