Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview

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

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

Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.

Forest have also made four changes 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.

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

"He has done a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve forged it into a good unit, so definitely a difficult game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and done very well 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 - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the major fixtures."

The midfielder has no future at Aston Villa, news that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:

"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, committing the money we need."

The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Aston 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 top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.