Villa against Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Preamble
Hello and welcome to this English top-flight encounter between Villa and Forest. The home side are the favourites to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently occupying third place, while Forest are 17th and just a handful of points outside of the relegation zone.
The two teams are entering the game off of the back of a loss as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This promises to be a challenging task for the visitors to come away with all three points with Villa possessing one of the best home records in Europe at the moment and they also set a club record of 36 wins across all competitions this season. But maybe it’s new year, new story? All will become clear very soon.
The confirmed XIs will be announced shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Team News
The starting XIs have been announced. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.
Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.
Nottingham Forest have likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.
Nott’m Forest: Victor, Williams, Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Dominguez, I Jesus, Hutchinson, Bakwa, Milenkovic, Aina.
Bench: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.
Dugout Insights
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve moulded it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, 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 performed as strongly against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Squad News
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was stated by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss commented:
"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, 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 on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged 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 outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
