Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview

The team news is in. The Villa boss has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time around.

Aston 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 changes to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.

Nottingham 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 said on his opponent today:

"Emery has delivered a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a difficult game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve played against some of the top sides, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we struggled more against them. That’s probably the test of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."

Harvey Elliott has no future at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:

"We respect him all we can because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we are obligated to buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."

What a difference a year makes. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and the current boss is charged with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.