Aston Villa v Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston 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 occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The team news will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
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.
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 also made four adjustments 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.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good 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 sign him, spending the money we need."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked 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 outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
