Villa against Nottingham Forest: Top-Flight Build-Up

The lineups have been confirmed. Unai Emery has made a quartet of alterations to his starting XI who lost 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 starting 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.

Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche has said on his counterpart today:

"Emery has delivered a excellent job as a manager there. Their signings has been strong - spent a lot of money, to be fair, on some excellent players and they’ve forged it into a strong side, so definitely a tough game.

We’ve just demonstrated lately, we’ve taken on some of the top sides, or the ones that are tipped every year, and performed admirably against them - and a couple of teams maybe not as fancied, we haven't performed as strongly against them. That’s likely the test of the group - meeting the challenge of each game rather than just the big games."

The midfielder has will not be staying at Aston Villa, an update that was confirmed by the manager Emery in the lead-up to this match. The boss stated:

"We respect him all we can because he’s a excellent professional, very respectful. The situation we have with Harvey is this year he is a loan player and if he is playing matches, we must buy him. We decided two months ago we are not convinced to make the move permanent, spending the money we need."

How times change. This time last year Forest were in third place in the table, where Villa are now. A lot of things have changed, including the manager twice and Sean Dyche is charged with keeping the club in the Premier League this season. Since being appointed 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 remaining.