Aston Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up

The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI 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 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.

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

Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his opponent today:

"Emery has delivered a great 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 shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a difficult game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the bigger teams, 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 challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."

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

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

How times change. 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 Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season remaining.