Aston Villa face Crystal Palace in the final game of the 2023/24 Premier League season, and here’s how Unai Emery’s starting line-up could look at Selhurst Park on Sunday.
It’s mission already accomplished for Villa as far as qualifying for the Champions League next season goes, and so it takes the pressure off requiring a result in this game against an in-form Palace side who are impressing under Oliver Glasner.
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That said, both Emery and the players will want to end on a positive note and sign off on this season with another win to break the 70-point mark, while Ollie Watkins goes in search of his 20th league goal of the campaign to hopefully reach a brilliant personal landmark.
However, as has been the case for weeks now, it’s a depleted Villa squad that will travel south, as Emery confirmed eight players will miss out, with Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendia, Boubacar Kamara, Jacob Ramsey, Matty Cash, Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers and Nicolo Zaniolo all sidelined by injury.
That in turn makes it a simpler task to predict most of our starting line-up, but there are still some important decisions that Emery will need to make in order to protect his jaded players from picking up any late setbacks.
Nevertheless, Emiliano Martinez will no doubt want to be involved and so he’ll likely take his place between the posts, with an unchanged backline of Ezri Konsa, Diego Carlos, Pau Torres and Lucas Digne in front of him.
In midfield, Leon Bailey, John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Moussa Diaby could get the nod, while having come off the bench and made a game-changing impact against Liverpool last time out, Jhon Duran could be rewarded with a starting berth for this clash to support Watkins in the final third.
Emery is severely limited in what he can do, but the Villa boss may opt to rotate and rest some of his players to protect them after what has been a gruelling campaign and with our objective already achieved.
With that in mind, could the likes of Robin Olsen, Clement Lenglet, Calum Chambers, Kaine Kesler-Hayden and Tim Iroegbunam get an opportunity instead?
Particularly in the case of the latter two youngsters, it would be great to see him them get minutes and gain valuable Premier League experience with the pressure off, while we could be bidding farewell to Lenglet and Chambers this summer, and so it would be a nice touch to see them get one final run out in a Villa shirt.
Time will tell what Emery goes with, but given his competitive nature and demanding culture to always win and get better, we could go with our strongest XI to start, with the option of bringing off the players who have put in the hard yards this season in the latter stages, hopefully when we’re already en route to all three points.