Aston Villa v Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between 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 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are coming into the game following a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa boasting 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 be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, 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."
Squad News
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The issue 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 sign him, 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 Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.
