Aston Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game following a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a difficult task for Forest to obtain 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 maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: 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.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably 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 - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed 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 top professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
