Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up

The team news is in. The Villa boss has made four changes to his starting XI who were defeated by 4-1 to Arsenal last time out.

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 adjustments to their matchday squad after a 2-0 defeat to Everton.

Nottingham 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 commented on his opponent today:

"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their recruitment has been impressive - invested a lot of money, to be fair, on some top players and they’ve shaped it into a good unit, 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 probably the test of the group - meeting the expectation of each game rather than just the big games."

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

"We respect him all we can because he’s a excellent 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 made the decision two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."

The tables have turned. This time last year Nottingham Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have shifted, including the manager on two occasions and the current boss is tasked with keeping the club in the top-flight 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.