Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are coming into the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be 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? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
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.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also made four adjustments to their starting 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible 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 playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
