Aston Villa face West Ham Utd in the Premier League this weekend, and Unai Emery has provided our latest team news ahead of the clash.
Villa will be looking to respond after a bitterly disappointing performance and defeat at Monaco in the Champions League in midweek, and so a significant improvement is expected on Sunday evening.
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It certainly won’t be easy against the Hammers who caused us problems in our recent FA Cup tie at Villa Park, and so we’ll need to produce a top performance to secure the desired outcome.
Villa were still without a number of key individuals during the week due to injury, some more long-term than others, but it was hoped that Emery would be given good news on the injury front this weekend as he always welcomes new signing Andres Garcia into the mix.
Along with Donyell Malen, we’ve hopefully added two important reinforcements moving forward, but there was a positive update ahead of our league outing this weekend too as the Villa boss confirmed in his pre-match press conference that John McGinn is back in full training with the rest of the group and will be in contention to feature this weekend.
However, Pau Torres, Ross Barkley and Amadou Onana all remain sidelined due to injury, and while the latter midfield duo will hope to close in on a return in the next week or two, Torres remains a longer-term absentee after sustaining a broken metatarsal at the end of last month.
With Villa facing Celtic in a crunch encounter in the Champions League next week, McGinn’s return is a timely boost to give us more quality and competition in midfield, and although it’s unlikely he’ll come straight back into the Villa XI on Sunday, he’ll hope to get some minutes to build his match fitness and sharpness back up after his recent absence.
Our defence remains a concern though with Torres still sidelined, as it leaves us short of options behind Tyrone Mings and Ezri Konsa. The West Ham game will of course now come too soon for any further signings to feature in, but it has to be the priority for Villa between now and the end of the month.
