Aston Villa face Club America in Chicago in the final game of our pre-season tour in the USA, and here’s how Unai Emery’s starting line-up looks for the encounter.
It has been a challenging tour thus far as Villa have suffered defeats to Columbus Crew and RB Leipzig, scoring just once while conceding six goals.
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However, as emphasised by Emery again this week, although he always goes into matches wanting to win, the most important thing at this stage in our preparations is building fitness, avoiding injury setbacks and continuing the hard work to get ourselves fully ready for the start of the new Premier League season.
Various other factors have come into play too, be it our intensive training sessions likely having a negative impact on performances while our opposition have been at varying stages of their own campaigns, and so the focus continues to be on getting the work in to be at our best in a fortnight.
A common trend that we’ve seen in the US has been Emery making multiple changes at half-time onwards to change his entire XI, and so we could see that continue in this outing before the Villa boss starts to settle on his preferred line-up against Athletic Bilbao and Borussia Dortmund after we head home this weekend.
Nevertheless, it will be great to see our summer signings continue to integrate and adapt, while the likes of Emiliano Buendia and Jacob Ramsey will hope to continue to get valuable playing time on their return from injury, and so it promises to be another fascinating watch on Saturday night.
After impressing last time out, Amadou Onana and Ian Maatsen will hope to follow it up as they’re named in the Villa XI, while Lamarde Bogarde gets another chance to impress, this time in his preferred role as a centre-half next to Pau Torres.
Buendia and Ramsey are among the substitutes again, while there is no Diego Carlos after his red card in our last outing. It’s unclear at this stage if the Villa defender is having to serve a ban despite it only being a friendly, or if Emery has decided to leave him out after his red card in midweek, while speculation has also linked him with an exit.
It’s a strong Villa match day squad as expected though, and it’s hoped that we can sign off on the USA tour with a good performance and win, with players getting more valuable minutes and hopefully avoiding any fresh injury concerns.
Your Aston Villa team to take on Club América at Soldier Field. 👊 pic.twitter.com/aVkMH5HjVH
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) August 3, 2024