Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game following a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa boasting 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 maybe it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The team news will be released 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 XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against 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 highly-rated, 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 big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a excellent 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 sign him, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were third 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 Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
