Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club 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 announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 defeat to Everton.
Nott’m 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent 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 shaped it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting 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 are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston 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 appointed 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 to go.
