Villa v Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently sitting third, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Forest to obtain all three points with Villa boasting 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 new year, new story? All will become clear 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 were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
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 adjustments 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.
Dugout Insights
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible 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 must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year 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 Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
