Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a tough task for the visitors 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 club 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 be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings 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 difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we need."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
