Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview

The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.

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 said on his opponent today:

"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve moulded it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."

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

"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. 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 persuaded to sign him, spending the money we need."

The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is charged 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 outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.