Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight clash between Aston Villa and Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a defeat 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 Forest to come away with all three points with Villa boasting 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 perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat 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 opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated 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 likely the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-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 are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, 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 to go.
