Aston Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa having 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 new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery 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.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have also made four changes 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own 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 expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him all we can 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 featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and the current boss is tasked 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
