Aston Villa host Tottenham in a fourth-round FA Cup tie on Sunday evening, and Unai Emery has named his starting line-up for the clash.
After seeing off West Ham Utd in the last round, Villa will look to continue to advance in the competition with the hope that we can end our wait silverware this season.
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It won’t be easy against Spurs despite their injury crisis, and although our situation isn’t as dire as theirs, we will be missing key individuals for this encounter too.
As per Emery in his pre-match press conference on Friday, Matty Cash, Tyrone Mings, Pau Torres, Ross Barkley and Ollie Watkins have all been ruled out due to injury, while January loan signing Axel Disasi is unavailable due to being cup-tied.
While that undoubtedly leaves us short-handed in key areas, there was an intriguing wait to see if fellow new arrivals Marcos Asensio and Marcus Rashford would start, and as per the club’s post below, both were named on the bench and will hope to get on in the latter stages to make their debuts.
Emery makes two changes to the side that lost to Wolves last time out, with Leon Bailey and Donyell Malen coming in for Lamare Bogarde and Watkins, while there was a notable absence in the matchday squad with Amadou Onana not included.
Time will tell if that is injury related or not as we certainly could do with avoiding further setbacks, but it’s a strong Villa starting line-up with top options on the bench if needed, and hopefully we’re able to advance in convincing fashion to keep our Cup run going.
It’s a big opportunity for Malen though to deliver a positive response after being left out of our Champions League squad for the knockout phase, as Emery pointed out that he’ll have a key role to play domestically despite naturally being left disappointed by the decision, and so it’s hoped that he can make an important contribution from this weekend onwards.
How we start this evening to face Spurs 👊 #AVLTOT pic.twitter.com/0s2cemAXUi
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) February 9, 2025
