Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight clash between Aston Villa and Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Forest are in 17th position and just four points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments 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
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - 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 top sides, 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 probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting 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 featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. 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 Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
