Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a club 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 starting lineups will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
Aston 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 also made four changes to their matchday 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 counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic 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 forged it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced 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 highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge 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 Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and the current boss is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed 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 to go.
