Villa v Forest: Premier League Build-Up
Introduction
Welcome everyone to this English top-flight fixture between Villa and Forest. Villa will be the expected winners to win in this lunchtime start as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
Both clubs are entering the game following a setback as Villa were beaten 4-1 by top-of-the-table Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a difficult task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home forms in Europe at the moment and they also achieved a team record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will be released shortly before kick-off at 12.30pm GMT.
Confirmed Lineups
The lineups have been confirmed. 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 also made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nottingham Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Pre-Match Quotes
Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:
"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."
League Context
The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche 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 to go.