Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Villa will be the strong favourites to win in this lunchtime start as they are soaring this season and are currently in third, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Each side 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 shapes up as a difficult task for Forest to secure all three points with Villa having one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s a new year and a new narrative? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.
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 matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his opponent today:
"He has done a excellent job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so certainly a challenging game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven't performed as strongly 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 no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, 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
The tables have turned. 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 twice and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League 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 remaining.