Villa v Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring 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.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for Forest to obtain all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a club 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 be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss 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 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:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.