Aston Villa face Club Brugge in the Champions League on Wednesday night, and here’s how Unai Emery’s starting line-up for the encounter could look.
Villa will look to protect a 3-1 advantage from the first leg in our round-of-16 tie after a crucial win on the road last week, but it certainly won’t be a straight-forward task to finish the job at home.
READ MORE: Crucial triple boost for Villa ahead of Club Brugge clash
As we’ve seen in our previous two meetings with the Belgian outfit this season, they’re more than capable of posing a dangerous attacking threat, and so we’ll need to be at our best defensively and in front of goal to finish this tie off and advance to the quarter-finals.
While we’ll have a lengthy break after this game before we face Preston in the FA Cup on March 30, there was good news ahead of the encounter as Emery confirmed that Emiliano Martinez, Marco Asensio and Amadou Onana would all be included in the matchday squad having recovered from injury.
That in turn will strengthen our starting line-up and bench, and it’s hoped that we have the personnel and gameplan to get the desired outcome and keep our European journey rolling on this season.
Three changes, Martinez boost
Having recovered from the injury that ruled him out of our win at Brentford last weekend, Martinez will be expected to come back in to replace Robin Olsen between the posts.
It could be an unchanged backline in front of him though after we kept a much-needed clean sheet on Saturday, with Axel Disasi, Ezri Konsa, Tyrone Mings and Lucas Digne hopefully providing us with a strong foundation once again to go on and win the game.
In contrast, there could be a change in the midfield pivot ahead of them, as having got minutes in our last two outings to build up his match fitness and sharpness after a stint on the sidelines, Boubacar Kamara is hopefully now ready to regain his place in the starting XI and sit alongside Youri Tielemans to give us control and presence.
That in turn could shift John McGinn further up the pitch on the right side, giving us defensive protection down that flank when needed, while his energy and tenacity in more advanced areas could help set the tone for the rest of the team to get on the front foot and not allow Club Brugge to build sustained pressure of their own.
Morgan Rogers and Marcus Rashford could complete the trident behind Ollie Watkins, with some freshness added to the pace and transitional threat that we pose as the visitors will have to attack and get forward in numbers, which could leave space for us to expose in their defensive third.
Naturally, with the quality and depth we have in the current squad, especially now that players are returning from injury, Matty Cash, Pau Torres, Ian Maatsen, Onana, Marco Asensio, Leon Bailey and Jacob Ramsey will all be hoping to be more heavily involved than suggested below, but that’s the beauty of having such a strong group.
While we hope we won’t need our bench in midweek, as that would mean that we’re well on course to advance, it’s fundamental to have such quality in reserve to change the game if required. Ultimately, it’s hoped that will prove to be a major strength and advantage for us as we head into the business end of the campaign.