Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Preamble
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight clash between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are coming into the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa possessing 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 new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 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.
Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their starting squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a difficult game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Transfer Update
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
Form Guide
What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions 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 accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
