Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the strong favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are in 17th position and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game on the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to secure all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The team news will be released 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 lineup who were defeated by 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.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four changes 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 commented on his counterpart today:
"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
