Villa v Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side 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 lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a team 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 be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 changes to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:
"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
