Aston Villa face Crystal Palace in the semi-finals of the FA Cup at Wembley on Saturday evening, and Unai Emery has named his starting line-up for the encounter.
Both sides will be desperate to book a spot in the final next month in a bid to land silverware, and given Palace have emerged as a problematic opponent for us in recent meetings, it promises to be a difficult assignment to get the better of Oliver Glasner’s side this weekend.
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Villa will also be looking to bounce back after our disappointment in midweek having slipped to a late defeat at Manchester City in the ongoing battle for a top-five finish in the Premier League, but our full focus will no doubt be on the FA Cup for now and trying to advance to the showpiece finale.
Having continued to rotate and made multiple changes on Tuesday night, the expectation was that Emery would do the same for this encounter to freshen things up and tailor the personnel to the gameplan he has devised to defeat Palace, and as per the club’s post, the Villa boss has opted to make three changes with John McGinn, Marco Asensio and Ollie Watkins coming in to replace Amadou Onana, Jacob Ramsey and Marcus Rashford.
There is a blow for Villa as it appears as though Rashford has been ruled out with a knock having failed to make the matchday squad, but it’s still a strong Villa bench if Emery needs to make changes.
Emiliano Martinez starts between the posts, with an unchanged backline in front of him from midweek consisting of Matty Cash, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres and Lucas Digne.
Youri Tielemans drops back into his deeper role in our midfield pivot alongside Boubacar Kamara as the pair will hopefully give us presence and control in the game, while Asensio will be deployed through the middle and have McGinn and Morgan Rogers either side of him in the attacking third.
It’s Watkins who leads the Villa line as he’ll look to make his mark once again having been restored to the starting line-up, and it’s hoped that they can ultimately get the job done and ensure that we return to Wembley next month to try and end our wait for a major trophy.
