Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Preview
Preamble
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight clash between Villa and Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side 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 obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps 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.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations 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.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also made four adjustments 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own 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 - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss commented:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The issue 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 Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked 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 above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
