Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great 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 tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against 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 done as well against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
