Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game following a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa possessing 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? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The team news will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He has done a great 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 challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe 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
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
