Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have likewise made four adjustments 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 said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
