Aston Villa have kept five clean sheets in their last eight Premier League games
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Emi Martinez and Tyrone Mings
Emi Martinez and Tyrone Mings(Image: Ash Crowden/Shutterstock)
Unai Emery believes Aston Villa’s defensive improvement has come as a result of the club’s eased injury list.
Only Marcus Rashford and Youri Tielemans are unavailable through injury for the club’s final home game of the season against Tottenham on Friday.
Before Rashford suffered a hamstring injury in the lead-up to the FA Cup semi-final clash against Crystal Palace, Emery had a fully fit squad.
Pau Torres and Matty Cash both returned to fitness for the 1-0 win over Brentford, which was Villa’s only league match in March following a 4-1 defeat at Selhurst Park.
Indeed, since that loss at Palace, Villa have won seven of their last eight league games, keeping clean sheets in five of those matches and conceding only four goals in total.
Their only defeat came at Manchester City in the closing stages at the Etihad Stadium, as Matheus Nunes scored a late winner for the hosts.
But Villa will move above Pep Guardiola’s side with a victory over Tottenham on Friday, before last season’s champions play Bournemouth at home next Tuesday, following their FA Cup final against Palace.
Shipping only four goals in their last eight league matches is a much-improved record compared to the previous eight games, in which Villa conceded 13.
"We are being more consistent through having more players available and more players ready to play,” Emery said. “One example is we had two left centre-backs in Mings and Pau not available.
“When they are both available, it is fantastic, because I can choose in different matches, different ways to prepare each game. When there's only one, he's playing a lot of matches.
“One month ago, two months ago, Tyrone Mings after his knee injury had to play two, three, four matches in a row and was physically not really feeling 100 per cent.
“But the problem is when they are not both available to play. And we had this problem as well this year.
"I remember when we played here against West Ham at home we drew 1-1, Tyrone Mings was getting injured and Pau Torres was not available and Lucas Digne was playing 60 minutes as a centre-back.
“And of course, when we were in that moment, we had problems. How we are performing now, I told you here, is because we are having more options, because there are more players available for each match, and through it, we are feeling stronger.
“I think we can feel stronger and we can keep more clean sheets. Of course, collectively as well, we can feel stronger if we have every player available, because we need to be in our structure tactically, solid, and now we are.
“Of course, we need to improve during the season, defensively and we needed to improve as well offensively, because we were not in good balance offensively, defensively and everything.
“But it's because we miss something offensively and we miss something defensively as well."
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