Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this Premier League encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved 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 starting lineups will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured 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 - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan 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 would need to."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, 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 accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
