Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has provided our latest team news ahead of our crunch Premier League encounter with Tottenham on Sunday.
Villa go into the meeting this weekend with a five-point advantage over Spurs in the race to secure fourth place, albeit our rivals have a game in hand.
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In turn, a win would be huge for our aspirations of qualifying for the Champions League, with fifth place potentially good enough too, and so it’s vital that we produce a top performance on Sunday afternoon in what will be a difficult test.
With that in mind, it was hoped that off the back of making five changes for our Europa Conference League clash with Ajax in midweek, Emery would have as close to a full-strength squad available as possible, and he delivered positive news on Friday following the trip to Amsterdam.
As per The Athletic’s Jacob Tanswell, both Pau Torres and John McGinn are available for Sunday, with the Spaniard coming off at half-time against Ajax and emerging as a potential doubt, while Emery revealed after the game that McGinn didn’t start as he had an issue in the warm-up.
Given the Villa skipper came on in the second half and made an important impact, the expectation was that he would be fine to feature this weekend, while the Villa boss also noted that the plan was always to play Torres for 45 minutes as he continues his comeback from an injury.
Meanwhile, he also added that Ramsey will train on Saturday and a late decision will be made on his availability, but given that he’s already in contention to return from his injury issue, that’s a boost in itself that he isn’t expected to be ruled out for a significant period of time.
It’s been a disrupted campaign for the 22-year-old thus far following two foot injuries, and so he’ll be itching to get back involved as soon as possible.
It could be argued that a midfield quartet of Leon Bailey, John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Jacob Ramsey gives us our best balance in the side in both phases of the game with other injuries in mind, and so having them fit for Sunday and the remainder of the run-in would give us a major lift.
That said, we also don’t want to rush anyone back and risk a setback, but with Ezri Konsa back in the side now too, we’re hopefully getting closer to Emery’s preferred XI from who is available for what will be a massive week in our season.
