Aston Villa face Manchester United in the Premier League on Sunday, and Unai Emery has named his starting line-up for the encounter.
Villa will look to secure a 10th consecutive win across all competitions this weekend as we hope to maintain our excellent recent form and momentum.
Emery confirmed in his pre-match press conference that Pau Torres, Tyrone Mings, Ross Barkley and Harvey Elliott were set to miss out, but there was a more positive update on Emiliano Martinez as he continued his recovery from a back injury.
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As per the club’s post below, Villa make one change from our win over West Ham United last weekend, with an important boost coming between the posts as Martinez has indeed recovered to replace Marco Bizot in the line-up.
Evann Guessand is named on the bench in his final game before heading to AFCON to represent Ivory Coast, but there is a string of absentees this weekend due to injury, while Jadon Sancho is ineligible to face his parent club.
Nevertheless, we still have a strong starting line-up and key options available on the bench if needed to come on and impact the game, and so it’s hoped that we can sign off before Christmas with a big performance and three important points.
Naturally, given our record against United over the past couple of decades, wins have been hard to come by despite their more recent struggles, but perhaps we can start to change that in our ongoing ascent, particularly after the events of the last day of last season at Old Trafford, as we missed out on Champions League football in bitterly disappointing fashion.
Your Villa XI this afternoon 🫡 #AVLMUN pic.twitter.com/6xdZcWzhdP
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) December 21, 2025
