Aston Villa boss Unai Emery provided a positive update on Emiliano Martinez in his pre-Liverpool press conference on Friday.
The 30-year-old has been sidelined with a calf injury since coming off at half-time in the first leg of our Europa Conference League play-off round tie against Hibernian last week.
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Having missed our win over Burnley last weekend as well as sitting out the second leg against Hibs on Thursday night, there has been concern over whether or not Martinez is expected to be ruled out for Sunday’s trip to Anfield too.
His call-up from Argentina for the upcoming international break hinted that it isn’t that serious an issue, while Emery has downplayed the severity of the setback by previously describing it as a ‘small’ injury.
The Villa boss has now given a fresh update on Martinez, and it’s largely positive in that the Argentine international trained with the group on Friday morning in an important step forward, but time will tell if he passes his fitness test on Saturday which will confirm his availability.
Emery also revealed that Alex Moreno, Jacob Ramsey, Bertrand Traore and Tim Iroegbunam won’t be available though.
“He trained this morning. Tomorrow is the last training [before Liverpool] which will be important if he is going to be available or not. Hopefully, yes,” Emery told the media.
“Still injured are Álex Moreno, Jacob Ramsey, Bertrand Traoré. And Tim (Iroegbunam) as well, is still working alone.”
Although Robin Olsen would have taken a lot of confidence from his clean sheet in midweek to follow up a largely positive performance at Burnley, there is no denying that Martinez’s experience, leadership and quality between the posts is missed when he’s absent from the side.
Particularly given the difficulty of the challenge ahead this weekend, it would be a huge boost to have him back fit and available to start on Merseyside, thus adding more of an assurance at the back that we can build off a solid foundation in defence.
Meanwhile, it’s disappointing that the quartet named above are still out, particularly Moreno as the initial timeline on his recovery had him in contention by now, but along with Ramsey, Traore and Iroegbunam, it’s hoped that they’ll be ready to make their respective comebacks after the international break.
Villa could certainly do with a boost in numbers given the Carabao Cup and group stage of the Europa Conference League begins later this month, and so it will be important that they make progress in their recoveries in the next fortnight.