Villa v Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Villa and Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a difficult task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good 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, spending the money we need."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. 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 tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League 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 remaining.
