Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview

The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.

Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.

Substitutes: 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.

Nottingham 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 counterpart today:

"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so certainly a challenging game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."

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

"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The problem 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 persuaded to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."

The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.