Aston Villa face Club Brugge in the Champions League on Wednesday evening, and Unai Emery has named his starting line-up for the encounter.
Villa arrived in Belgium looking to make if four wins in four games to start our European campaign, and securing another three crucial points would be a big step towards automatically qualifying for the knockout stage.
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As with every game at this level, this promises to be another difficult challenge for Emery and his players, but it’s hoped that we have the quality and depth to get the better of our opponents and continue to maintain our perfect campaign thus far, having also not yet conceded.
With Liverpool in the Premier League this weekend, it was unclear if the Villa boss would be tempted into making changes and rotating slightly given the quality at his disposal with an almost full-strength squad, while Matty Cash and Ross Barkley were ruled out this week due to injury.
As per the club’s post below, we’ve gone with a strong starting XI as expected, but Emery has made five changes with Diego Carlos, Tyrone Mings, Ian Maatsen, Boubacar Kamara and Leon Bailey coming in to replace Matty Cash, Pau Torres, Lucas Digne, Amadou Onana and Jacob Ramsey.
It’s still an experienced line-up that has enough about it to get the job done in Bruges, but it will be interesting to see how they gel given our preferred and settled starting XI has been disrupted.
It will be particularly interesting to see the partnership between Kamara and Youri Tielemans in our deeper midfield pivot as that will be key to our ability to control and dictate tempo and possession, while it’s a big step up for Mings as he gets another start after his comeback against Crystal Palace last week.
As always, Villa have a strong bench to call upon if needed, but it’s hoped that we see a much more positive performance to secure maximum points as we look to build back confidence and momentum going into our trip to Anfield on Saturday.
Here’s how we line-up to take on Club Brugge 📋#UCL || #UpTheVilla pic.twitter.com/2D4sWWjjg8
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) November 6, 2024