Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Premier League Preview

The starting XIs have been announced. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his first eleven who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.

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 likewise made four adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 loss 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.

Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:

"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent 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 demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."

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

"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we would need to."

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 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 above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.