Villa versus Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up

The lineups have been confirmed. The Villa boss has made four changes to his first eleven who lost 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.

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 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.

Forest boss Sean Dyche has said on his opponent today:

"He’s [Unai Emery] done a excellent 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 forged it into a cohesive team, so definitely a challenging game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the bigger teams, or the ones that are favoured every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams perhaps not as fancied, we haven’t done as well against them. That’s probably the challenge of the group - rising to 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 commented:

"I am respecting him as much as possible because he’s a very good professional, very dedicated. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is on loan and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, committing the money we need."

The tables have turned. This time last year Forest were third in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have altered, including the manager on two occasions and Sean Dyche is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight this season. Since being appointed on 21 October, Dyche has accumulated 10 Premier League points and the side are just above the bottom three with 19 games of the season remaining.