Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are entering the game on the back of a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa having 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 maybe it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who were defeated by 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four changes 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated 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 maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him all we can 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 are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
How times change. 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 twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
