Aston Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made four changes 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four adjustments 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, 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 probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed 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 excellent 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 convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. 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 charged 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.
