Aston Villa suffered another late blow in our 3-3 draw with Brentford on Saturday, as Douglas Luiz will now be suspended for two games.
The 25-year-old was booked in the 97th minute in our chaotic draw, which in turn made it 10 yellow cards this season, and so he’ll now face a two-match suspension.
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Subsequently, Luiz won’t be available to face either Arsenal or Bournemouth, and that will result in a selection headache for Unai Emery as he’s already had to deal with injuries and suspension issues all season.
With Boubacar Kamara, Jacob Ramsey and Emiliano Buendia all sidelined and expected to miss the rest of the season, we’ve had to rely on key individuals to take on significant workloads without them.
Captain John McGinn returned from a suspension of his own to make his comeback against Brentford, but Emery will be forced into another reshuffle to fill the void left by Luiz.
The expectation is that McGinn and Youri Tielemans will form the central midfield partnership in his absence, although youngster Tim Iroegbunam will be pushing for more involvement too which in turn could free one of them up to play in a more advanced role.
It’s a crucial challenge for the Villa boss that he has to get right, as having seen his side concede seven goals in our last two outings, we’ve got to rediscover our balance in both phases of the game to become a difficult side to break down again.
Luiz will undoubtedly feature prominently against Lille in our upcoming Europa Conference League quarter-final tie now that he’s unavailable for the next two weekends, but given his influence and impact so far this season, it’s certainly a blow to be without him in any competition for any period of time.
The Brazilian international has scored 10 goals and provided 10 assists in 45 appearances, and with Villa still having so much on the line this season, the last thing we needed was to be without our midfield orchestrator.
Nevertheless, that’s the situation that we find ourselves in, and having dealt with so many important absences all year, Emery will be tasked with finding another solution to deal with the setback.
