Aston Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to secure 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 new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
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.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also made four changes to their matchday 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
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well 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 - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update 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 top professional, very respectful. 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 made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
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 shifted, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is charged 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 remaining.
