Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Premier League Match Preview

The team news is in. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting lineup 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.

Forest have also made four changes to their matchday 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.

Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:

"He’s [Unai Emery] done a great job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some very good players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are fancied every year, and held our own against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as highly-rated, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."

The midfielder has will not be staying 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 as much as possible because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan 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 Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, 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 secured 10 Premier League points and the side are just outside the bottom three with 19 games of the season to go.