Aston Villa host Cardiff City in the fifth round of the FA Cup on Friday night, and here’s how Unai Emery’s starting line-up could look for the encounter.
Villa will be looking to not only advance in the competition to take another step towards winning a trophy this season, but also to produce a reaction after our dismal 4-1 defeat to Crystal Palace in the Premier League earlier this week.
READ MORE: Eight Villa players could be missing for FA Cup clash vs Cardiff
With a crunch run-in ahead of us as we look to achieve our objectives across the league, FA Cup and Champions League, Tuesday night’s performance and result was well below the standard required, and hopefully it’s a catalyst to get us on a run for the remainder of the campaign.
It’s likely to be a tricky assignment against a Cardiff side arriving under no real pressure and looking to cause an upset, but given we could be without up to eight players due to injury, that makes Emery’s task even harder.
Emiliano Martinez, Tyrone Mings, Matty Cash, Amadou Onana, Boubacar Kamara and Donyell Malen are all doubts, with the Dutchman looking to overcome illness, while Pau Torres and Ross Barkley have been ruled out entirely.
With our strength in depth, we’ll still put out a strong starting line-up, but our bench will certainly suffer with so many absentees, if none of those named above are able to pass late tests to feature.
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Should Martinez fail to recover in time, Robin Olsen will come in to deputise for him between the posts, while it’s a similar scenario for Matty Cash as Andres Garcia will likely keep his starting spot if his teammate is not deemed fit enough to take his place.
Ezri Konsa and Axel Disasi should form our centre-half partnership, while Ian Maatsen may come in to freshen things up at left-back and afford Lucas Digne a rest.
Again, our midfield pairing will depend on availability, but the expectation is that Youri Tielemans and John McGinn will have to continue in the pivot, even though it’s asking a lot of the pair who have had to take on a heavy workload in recent weeks.
There could be a fresher look to our attack though as Emery has the ability to rotate there, and so Leon Bailey, Marco Asensio and Marcus Rashford will all hope to come into the Villa starting line-up, with Jacob Ramsey keeping his place from the Palace defeat.
Much will depend on whether or not Emery believes that set-up will give us the necessary balance and a successful dynamic to pose a sustained threat against Cardiff, as it could involve Rashford starting up front with Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers getting a rest.
That Villa XI should have enough to get the desired result, but if we don’t show significant improvement after what we saw at Selhurst Park, this game will undoubtedly become a lot more difficult.
Better team that us