Villa v Nottingham Forest: Premier League Build-Up

The team news is in. Unai Emery has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their previous match.

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.

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:

"He has done a great job as a manager there. Their signings has been good - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve shaped it into a strong side, so definitely a challenging game.

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve played against some of the larger clubs, or the ones that are fancied every year, and done very well against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as highly-rated, we struggled more against them. That’s likely the challenge of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the major fixtures."

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

"We respect him as much as possible because he’s a top professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is featuring regularly, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not persuaded to sign him, spending the money we would need to."

How times change. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being named manager on 21 October, Dyche has won 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.