Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight clash between 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.
The two teams are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 also made four changes to their starting 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 said on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] 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 definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded 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 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 won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
