Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game following a loss as Villa were overcome 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a tough task for the visitors to obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 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
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced 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 haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.
