Opening Thoughts
Greetings and welcome to this Premier League clash between Villa and Forest. The home side are the expected winners to win in this early kick-off as they are flying this season and are currently in third, while Forest are 17th and just four points outside of the drop zone.
Each side are entering the game off of the back of a defeat as Villa were beaten 4-1 by league-leading Arsenal and Forest succumbed 2-0 to Everton.
This shapes up as a challenging task for Sean Dyche’s side to come away with all three points with Villa boasting one of the best home records 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? All will become clear very soon.
The team news 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 starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.
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 also made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.
Manager Comments
Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:
"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so certainly a tough game.
We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."
Player Situation
The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss said:
"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The issue we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."
League Context
How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.
