Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview
Opening Thoughts
Hello and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently in third, while Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to secure all three points with Villa possessing 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 new year, new story? The answer will be revealed very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Substitutes: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Forest have also 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.
Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight 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 remaining.