Aston Villa versus Forest: Premier League Match Preview
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this Premier League fixture between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the strong 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.
Both clubs are coming into the game off of the back of a setback as Villa were overcome 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest lost 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for Forest to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The starting lineups will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The team news is in. Unai Emery has made four changes to his starting XI who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 also 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:
"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their signings has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more 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 no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, committing the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
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 Sean Dyche is tasked 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 outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
