Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side are coming into the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for the visitors to secure 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 maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 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 commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on 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 haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, 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."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged 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 relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
