Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are coming into the game on the back of a setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging 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 recorded 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 released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes 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.
Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nott’m 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
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible 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 playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
