Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are 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 seventeenth 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 defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain 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 maybe it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
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 around.
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 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He has done a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. 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 persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League 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.
