Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are coming into the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Forest to obtain 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 likewise made four changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat 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.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely 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 fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
The tables have turned. 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 charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed 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.
