Aston Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Match Preview

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

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 starting squad after a 2-0 loss 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.

Forest boss Sean Dyche has commented on his counterpart today:

"Emery has delivered a fantastic job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a cohesive team, so certainly a tough game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve faced some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."

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

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

What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager 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.