Aston Villa v Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight clash between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting lineup who were defeated by 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.
Forest have also made four changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
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 changed, including the manager twice and the current boss 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
