Villa against Forest: Premier League Match Preview

The lineups have been confirmed. 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 likewise made four changes 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.

Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:

"He has done a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied 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 likely the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."

Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the build-up to this match. The boss stated:

"I am respecting him as much as possible 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 playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."

How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked 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.