Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Forest to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting lineup 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 loss to Everton.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news 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 issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we need."
Season Snapshot
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 altered, 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 above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
