Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the 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 four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
It will be a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a club 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 lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat 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 has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. 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 made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we need."
Form Guide
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
