Aston Villa travel to face Wolves in the Premier League on Saturday evening, and Unai Emery has named his starting line-up.
Villa will be buoyed by our midweek win over Celtic in the Champions League, but the focus now switches to the league and replicating that form to put together a run of results which helps us to climb the standings.
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Speaking at his pre-match press conference on Friday, Emery confirmed the absences of Tyrone Mings, Matty Cash, Pau Torres and Ross Barkley for this encounter due to injury, and so we face similar selection problems as we did on Wednesday night.
There was better news in that game with John McGinn stepping up his return from injury with a significant shift off the bench, but Villa remain short-handed as we wait for potential reinforcements to arrive before the transfer deadline on Monday.
Boubacar Kamara filled in at centre-half against Celtic while Lamare Bogarde moved to right-back after Cash was forced off with his injury setback in the first half, and the expectation was that Villa would go with something similar for this encounter.
As per the club’s post below though, Villa make two changes to the side that started in midweek, with Andres Garcia and McGinn coming in for Cash and Leon Bailey respectively.
It’s a debut for the Spaniard after his arrival last month, and it’s good to see Emery go with a natural right-back in that position and deploy Bogarde in midfield where he has looked a lot more comfortable.
Meanwhile, there’s an important boost on the bench as Amadou Onana returns to the matchday squad to give us depth in midfield, and he’ll hope to play some part in the latter stages as we look to secure three crucial points to close the gap on those above us in the table.
Here’s how we line-up for #WOLAVL 📋 pic.twitter.com/E9ajIZk9Sq
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) February 1, 2025