Aston Villa face Newcastle United in Philadelphia in our first game of the Premier League Summer Series on Sunday night, as Unai Emery continues to prepare his side for the new campaign.
Villa picked up a 1-1 draw at Walsall last weekend in our first outing this pre-season, but preparations have stepped up this past week after the squad flew out to the USA.
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This will be the first of three games we’ll play Stateside to go alongside the bulk of our pre-season training, and so while the results won’t particularly matter, it’s important for Emery to see progression and improvement from his players in their fitness levels and also their ongoing understanding of his ideas.
New signing Moussa Diaby will begin training with his new teammates on Monday and so he won’t feature in this one, but our two other marquee summer additions, Youri Tielemans and Pau Torres, will be expected to make their non-competitive debuts.
Further, our internationals were absent against Walsall having had additional time off, but they’re all in the 26-man squad for this trip, albeit Jacob Ramsey and Alex Moreno are sidelined by injury and have stayed behind, while the likes of Tim Iroegbunam and Jhon Duran weren’t included.
The expectation is that Emiliano Martinez will start between the posts, while Lucas Digne will slot in at left-back and Matty Cash will start on the opposite side.
Time will tell if Torres comes in for this one having watched on from the sidelines last weekend, but it could be that Emery opts to gradually integrate him along with Tyrone Mings who returned later than others, and so Diego Carlos and Ezri Konsa could get the nod.
Douglas Luiz will likely start in midfield, but Emery has decisions to make as to who starts around him. Iroegbunam, Aaron Ramsey and Jaden Philogene were named in the XI last weekend, but with Boubacar Kamara, John McGinn and Youri Tielemans available now, they could all come straight in.
With no Diaby available yet, Emiliano Buendia and Ollie Watkins will possibly start up top, but as with many other options on the bench, we’ll likely see Cameron Archer, Philippe Coutinho, Morgan Sanson and others come in at some stage when Emery decides to ring the changes.
It will hopefully be a competitive game at this stage of our summer and a good test as we ramp things up, and it will be a boost to see our new faces feature as well as some of our youngsters who will continue to push to impress Emery with a view of being involved this season.
Predicted Aston Villa XI vs Newcastle: Martinez; Cash, Konsa, Carlos, Digne; McGinn, Kamara, Luiz, Tielemans; Buendia, Watkins.
🚨✅ Villa squad for Summer Series confirmed…#avfc #UTV 🟣🔵 pic.twitter.com/RrOnqTysSb
— Talk Villa (@thetalkvilla) July 19, 2023