Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone 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 flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are seventeenth and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off 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 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.
Forest have also made four changes to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Manager Comments
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so definitely a difficult game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan 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, committing the money we would need to."
Form Guide
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League 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 remaining.
