Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Preview

The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 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 adjustments 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.

Substitutes: Sels, Morato, Awoniyi, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko, Savona, Abbott.

Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:

"He’s [Unai Emery] done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."

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

"We respect him all we can because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. 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 convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we would need to."

What a difference a year makes. 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 on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked 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 above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.