Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to this English top-flight fixture between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Aston Villa are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are excelling this season and are currently occupying third place, while Nottingham Forest are seventeenth and just a handful of points outside of the drop zone.
Both clubs are coming into the game following a defeat as Villa were defeated 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a tough task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa having 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 perhaps it’s new year, new story? We will find out very soon.
The starting lineups will drop shortly before the start at 12.30pm GMT.
Starting Elevens
The lineups have been confirmed. 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.
Forest have likewise made four changes to their starting 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 said on his opponent today:
"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, so definitely a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced 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 struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news 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 top professional, very dedicated. The problem 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 made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we need."
Season Snapshot
How times change. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place 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 accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.
