Aston Villa face Fulham in a crunch Premier League game on Saturday, and here’s how Unai Emery’s starting line-up could look for the encounter.
After defeats to Manchester City and Crystal Palace in the league and FA Cup semi-finals respectively, Villa’s season is at risk of collapsing in the final stretch despite having experienced such a positive campaign overall.
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A top-five finish to secure our place in the Champions League next season is now the priority, and with just four games remaining this season, Emery and the players know that we must win all four to remain in contention as we look to close the gap on our rivals.
It certainly won’t be an easy task and we face a tricky encounter with Fulham this weekend with the Cottagers looking to catch us in the standings, and so it’s imperative that we bounce back in convincing fashion.
Two potential Villa changes, reaction needed
With Villa now just challenging on one front, Emery will have no reason not to go with his strongest line-up for each of our four remaining outings, but naturally there will be changes still as he devises the specific gameplan to beat our upcoming opponents, and so personnel is likely to switch.
Emiliano Martinez will be given the opportunity to play his way out of a dip in form in recent weeks and he’ll remain between the posts, while there could be just one change to the backline that started at Wembley last weekend.
Matty Cash, Ezri Konsa and Pau Torres could all start, and with Villa being at home, we could continue that more positive and attacking defensive unit with Ian Maatsen coming in to replace Lucas Digne at left-back.
It’s highly unlikely that Emery changes his desired way of playing at this stage, but Villa need to show more energy, urgency and intensity right across the pitch to not only get the crowd behind the team again, but to also outfight and outplay a dangerous Fulham side.
In turn, Maatsen gives us that injection of pace and tempo on the left flank, and this could be a good time to bring him back into the fold as we have to be more positive and take the game to our opponents.
Boubacar Kamara and Youri Tielemans will likely continue in the deeper pivot to give us control and presence in the midfield battle, while John McGinn, Morgan Rogers and Jacob Ramsey could be favoured to provide support behind Ollie Watkins in the final third.
With Marcus Rashford injured and Marco Asensio going through a dip in form, that seems like the most sensible quartet to go with to try and fire us to victory, but having recovered from injury, Leon Bailey will be itching to build on his positive cameo appearance last time out, along with Donyell Malen and Ross Barkley.
Amadou Onana, Andres Garcia, Digne, Tyrone Mings and Axel Disasi will be among those pushing to change that as we’ll have a strong bench available again, but Emery has to get it spot on this weekend to get us back on track, as another defeat would certainly risk a complete collapse in a season that promised so much.
That said, our last two defeats will have hurt the players as we’ve ultimately fallen short of what we wanted to achieve this year, and so they must take that frustration and anger out on Fulham on Saturday and secure what would be an invaluable win.
Agree with the potential Villa starting XI below, or would you make changes?