Aston Villa host Newcastle United in our Premier League season opener this weekend, and Unai Emery will be hoping for positive news on the injury front.
Having enjoyed a productive pre-season schedule to get the squad back up to speed and looking sharp ahead of the new campaign getting underway, one of the big hopes for the summer was that the players would come through unscathed.
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Naturally, there were knocks and setbacks along the way, but there wasn’t anything necessarily serious reported, albeit we were without Ross Barkley and Andres Garcia for a significant portion of it, while Morgan Rogers suffered an ankle injury in our win over Roma last week.
Given his importance and influence in the Villa starting line-up, that was the most concerning issue heading into this weekend, as the 23-year-old subsequently missed our friendlies against Marseille and Villarreal last weekend, and that in turn cast some doubt over his involvement against Newcastle with a lack of minutes to end pre-season.
Fortunately, it looks as though he’s trending in the right direction, as Rogers was seen with the rest of the squad after training on Wednesday in a social media post from the club, suggesting that he took part in the session in some capacity which is a major boost for us as we prepare for Saturday.
Further, Garcia was also seen in that video as he’ll provide cover for Matty Cash at right-back, while Villa’s Instagram post of training showed Barkley in the background, so that would also indicate that he was involved with the rest of the group and is pushing to get back to full fitness.
Emery will of course speak to the media in his pre-match press conference on Friday and so we’ll get a clearer idea of who will be available or not, but it certainly looks as though there should be positive news on the injury front with three key players, both in terms of the Villa XI and bench to give us competition and depth, making progress in their bid to be passed fit for Saturday.
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