Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start 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 drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game on the back of a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations 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.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also made four changes 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge 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 confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. 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 made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
