Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to secure 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 perhaps 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.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, 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 - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. 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 made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where 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 named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.