Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between 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 relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded 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 starting lineups will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 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.
Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, 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 major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
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 changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager 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 to go.
