Aston Villa face Go Ahead Eagles in the Europa League on Thursday evening, and Unai Emery has provided our latest team news.
Our victory over Tottenham in the Premier League this past weekend made it five consecutive wins across all competitions, as Villa continue to build confidence and momentum after a poor start to the season.
With two wins in two in our Europa League campaign thus far, we currently sit in third place in the standings as we look to try and secure an automatic place in the knockout stage.
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As with any trip on the road in Europe, this promises to be a difficult challenge for the players, but it’s one that we’ll be confident of overcoming to get the desired outcome given the quality and experience in the squad.
Ideally, Emery wouldn’t have any new injury concerns ahead of the encounter, but he confirmed this week that Lucas Digne has been added to the list of absentees.
“The players who are not here because they are injured are Youri Tielemans, Andrés García, Lucas Digne and Ross Barkley because he’s not in the list for this competition,” he told the media at his pre-match press conference, as per VillaTV.
While Tielemans and Garcia have been longer-term absences due to injury, Digne suffered a nasty cut to his ankle in the win over Tottenham this past weekend, and so it’s not a huge surprise that he’s been left behind and hasn’t travelled.
It’s hoped that it isn’t serious enough to make him a doubt to take on Manchester City this Sunday, but Ian Maatsen will no doubt be itching to make the most of his midweek opportunity to solidify his place in the Villa starting line-up as he continues to impress when given an opportunity so far this season.
There was better news from the images shared by Villa on social media of the squad boarding the plane to the Netherlands, as Tyrone Mings was part of the group, and so combined with the likes of Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley returning from injury in recent games, the Villa squad continues to grow stronger by the week in a hugely important boost for Emery.