Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Preview

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

Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Lindelof, Maatsen, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Watkins.

Bench: Bizot, Digne, Sancho, Garcia, Carroll, Bogarde, Hemmings, Malen, Jimoh-Aloba.

Nottingham Forest have also made four adjustments to their starting 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 remarked on his opponent today:

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

We’ve just shown lately, we’ve taken on 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 fancied, we haven't performed as strongly 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 will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was revealed by the manager Unai Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:

"I am respecting him all we can because he’s a top professional, very respectful. The issue 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 persuaded to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."

What a difference a year makes. This time last year Nottingham Forest were third in the table, where Aston Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager twice and the current boss is tasked 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 outside the relegation zone with 19 games of the season to go.