Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough 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 recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup 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.
Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments to their matchday 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent 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 performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Squad News
The midfielder 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 commented:
"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and the current boss is charged 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 above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
