Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game following a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The team news will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 likewise 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision 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 in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and the current boss is tasked 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.
