Aston Villa face a big week in our season across both the Premier League and Europa Conference League, and Unai Emery will have crucial decisions to make.
It begins with a trip to Amsterdam to face Ajax on Thursday evening, and sandwiched between the two legs of our round-of-16 tie is the visit of Tottenham in a potentially pivotal clash in the race for Champions League qualification.
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Fifth place may well be enough to secure a seat at Europe’s top table for next season, but ultimately the focus and objective for now is breaking into the top four, and Villa have put themselves in a wonderful position to do just that.
With a five-point cushion over Spurs, albeit they have a game in hand, Sunday’s showdown could be decisive in terms of extending that gap and putting ourselves in an even stronger position to fend them off come the end of the season.
However, Emery will no doubt want to maintain his impressive record of winning silverware in European competition with the players desperate to get their hands on a trophy too, and with the difficulty that we’ll face coming up against Ajax, we’ll need to be at our best to overcome the Dutch giants and advance to the next round.
With our next three games coming in the space of seven days, it seems unlikely that Emery will be able to put out his strongest line-up for each outing, and so our squad depth will now come to the fore to help us compete on two fronts.
Long-term absentees Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendia and Boubacar Kamara remain sidelined, while we’ll wait to see if Jacob Ramsey has suffered another significant setback. It also remains to be seen whether or not Pau Torres and Diego Carlos are ready to join Ezri Konsa in making their respective comebacks after picking up injuries of their own.
The Villa boss has to get his decisions and rotation right in order to have the desired results in the next week, and that balance will no doubt be hard to find.
Does he go full strength for the away leg this week and stick with his strongest XI against Tottenham, in the hope that we’ll be able to rest key individuals in the second leg at home?
Or, does he go the opposite way and rest players this Thursday evening with Spurs on Sunday in mind?
The likes of Morgan Rogers, Nicolo Zaniolo and Lucas Digne will be itching to be more involved, while Moussa Diaby will be eager to play a more prominent role off the back of his decisive impact off the bench last time out. With that in mind, Emery certainly has options.
For those of us who experienced the Martin O’Neill era, we find ourselves in a similar predicament. That said, this squad is talented and big enough to compete on both fronts and for us to be able to put out a strong line-up regardless of changes.
The decisions that Emery makes in the coming days will influence the direction in which our season continues to go. The Spaniard’s judgement has been almost flawless since he arrived given how much progression we’ve seen in that time, and so it’s hoped that it will follow a similar path in a crunch run of three games that will shape our campaign.
The two names not mentioned here that could be critical to our top 4 or Euro success are Tielemans and Iroegbunam. Uri can be can show greatness or disappear into thin grass. Come on Uri! Tim is the guy who’s time has come. If he can seal up the Kamara size hole and allow Mc Ginn to move up the pitch, we’ll be humming. I’m getting so f*+#ing excited!