Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has explained the reason behind Nicolo Zaniolo’s absence from the matchday squad vs Brighton.
It was reported by journalists attending the game that the 24-year-old was at the Amex Stadium ahead of kick-off, but once the official team-sheet was released, there was no sign of him.
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That in turn led to question marks over why he was a late scratch for the encounter, as he had made his return from injury in our 4-2 defeat to Olympiacos on Thursday night in the Europa Conference League.
Fortunately, there wasn’t a new issue, as Emery explained to reporters that it was due to the same injury that he was struggling with over the past fortnight.
As per The Athletic’s Jacob Tanswell, Emery confirmed that the Italian international played through the pain barrier to come off the bench against Olympiacos on Thursday night, but having failed to train over the past two days and after he felt the same pain ahead of this game, the decision was made for him to sit out.
It’s added that Zaniolo wanted to help and so tried to play in midweek, but it’s hoped that his efforts haven’t made the issue worse and will force him to sit out again in our upcoming games.
Villa are low on numbers and saw Morgan Rogers pick up an apparent hamstring issue on Sunday too, and so we’re really getting to a desperation stage in terms of having enough of our senior players available to start.
With a few days now before we travel to Greece, it’s hoped that there is positive news on the injury front from Emery, as although there was a boost this weekend with Alex Moreno coming off the bench to get minutes, we were still without Emiliano Martinez, Tyrone Mings, Boubacar Kamara, Jacob Ramsey, Youri Tielemans and Emiliano Buendia.
Worryingly, it looks to be catching up with us now as it was a tired performance on Sunday, and so it’s going to take a big effort from the players to dig as deep as possible to put in three – hopefully four – more big shifts between now and the end of the season.
