Aston Villa face Sheffield Utd on Friday night in the Premier League, and we’ll do so without Pau Torres and Youri Tielemans.
A win would not only maintain our superb home form, but it would temporarily at least, move us to the top of the league standings as our impressive start to the campaign goes on.
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Unai Emery will no doubt be dismissing those factors and focusing his players on the task at hand, and that’s another difficult test against a side desperately fighting for points to move away from relegation trouble.
In turn, if Villa aren’t at our best in this one, it’s certainly capable of becoming a slip-up, and ideally we’d have the whole squad available to have the best possible chance of securing all three points.
Unfortunately, that won’t be the case as Torres is the latest player to pick up a problem, with Emery confirming that the Spanish centre-half will be absent, as will Tielemans, and he offered potential timelines on their respective recoveries.
“Bertrand Traore is out. Youri Tielemans is out. Pau Torres is out as well for tomorrow. The other players are ready. Kamara is suspended,” he told the media at his pre-match press conference, as per VillaTV.
“Youri, we are thinking maybe not more than two weeks, but he is now working alone and recovering his injury in his calf. Pau Torres, it is his ankle. It’s a small injury. Every day coming is important to how he is improving, I don’t know if he will be available for Manchester United, but he could be.”
Given how influential he has been for us so far this season, not only with his improving defensive impact, but also with his composure, technical ability and passing range out from the back, Torres will be a big miss for us in both phases of the game.
Particularly with the Blades expected to sit back and make it difficult for us to find a breakthrough, not having Torres in the backline and being able to bring the ball out and help find ways to unlock a stubborn defence will be an issue.
Nevertheless, we do have a strong squad now and so it remains to be seen if Emery goes with Ezri Konsa and Diego Carlos as a centre-half partnership with Matty Cash back in at right-back, or if Clement Lenglet gets his first appearance in the league since joining us on loan in the summer.
With key games coming up over the Christmas period and beyond, it’s hoped that both Torres and Tielemans can recover and feature again sooner rather than later given how important they’ve been.
In more positive news, both Douglas Luiz and Lucas Digne return from suspension, and so the former will certainly help fill that void that will be left by Boubacar Kamara this week.
