Villa versus Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up

The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made four changes 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 also 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.

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

Forest boss Sean Dyche has remarked on his counterpart today:

"He has done a fantastic job as a manager there. Their transfer business has been good - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a cohesive team, so certainly a difficult game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on 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 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 major fixtures."

Harvey Elliott has will not be staying at Aston Villa, news that was confirmed 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 very good professional, very respectful. The problem we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is featuring regularly, we are obligated to buy him. We made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to sign him, spending the money we would need to."

The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.