Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has confirmed our latest team news ahead of our final Premier League game of the season at Crystal Palace on Sunday.
With fourth spot and a place in the Champions League next season already secured, Villa will head to Selhurst Park this weekend looking to simply finish the campaign on a positive note with another win.
As has been the case for weeks now though, Emery will take a depleted squad to face Palace, as he confirmed that eight first-team players will miss out.
Long-term absentees Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendia, Jacob Ramsey and Boubacar Kamara will be absent as expected, while Morgan Rogers hasn’t recovered from the hamstring injury he picked up at Brighton.
Unfortunately though, there was more bad news on the injury front as both Matty Cash and Youri Tielemans will sit this game out too, while Emery confirmed that Nicolo Zaniolo has suffered a significant setback as he’ll now miss EURO 2024 due to a broken metatarsal.
“Zaniolo broke his metatarsal and it is bad news,” Emery told the media at his pre-match press conference. He was a doubt, but he did the effort to play on Monday because he had pain in his back after the match we played against Lille. “He did the effort because we tried to use every players. He played 10 minutes and he broke his metatarsal and he will be out of the Euros. It is very sad for him. At the beginning of the season it will be difficult for him.
“Mings, Buendia, Kamara, Ramsey, Tielemans, Cash and Morgan [Rogers] are not available. We will play there being competitive.”
Although we have struggled over the past month or so with injuries and fatigue, Villa will still take a strong squad to Palace on Sunday as we look to sign off on a superb season on the right note.
While we may have sealed fourth place already and will take a seat at Europe’s top table next season, there are still things to play for, most notably Ollie Watkins going in search of a 20th league goal in this campaign.
Reaching that landmark figure will no doubt mean a lot to the Villa striker, and so it’s hoped that we can produce one last big performance, avoid any fresh injury blows heading into the summer and EURO 2024, and give the travelling supporters one more great result to enjoy before we bid farewell to the 2023/24 campaign.