Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be 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 relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Aston 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 also made four adjustments 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.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent 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 top players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably 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 expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
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 stated:
"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 on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice 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 bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
