Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are soaring this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
The two teams are coming into the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest fell 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for Sean Dyche’s side to obtain all three points with Villa having one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also recorded a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But perhaps it’s a new year and a new narrative? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting lineup who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 also made four changes 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a excellent professional, very dedicated. The problem 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 made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed 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.
