The starting lineup for Unai Emery’s Aston Villa against Olympiacos in the first leg of their Europa Conference League semi-final matchup may look like this.
With another challenging matchup against the Greek powerhouses, Villa will look to secure a spot in the Final in less dramatic circumstances after defeating Lille in the previous round via penalty shootout.
While Emery and the players will undoubtedly be totally concentrated on making a significant advancement toward a major European final, we have another crucial game in our season on Sunday when we visit Brighton.
The Villa manager, meanwhile, has to strike the appropriate balance as we want to qualify for the Champions League the following season by competing on two fronts. Unfortunately, this task is made more challenging by our injury problems.
Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendia, Boubacar Kamara, and Jacob Ramsey are the long-term absentees who are still out. Given their recent absences, it is unclear whether Alex Moreno or Nicolo Zaniolo will be able to play in this game. Emery is expected to provide an update during his pre-game press conference on Wednesday.
Furthermore, the list of Villa’s absences keeps getting longer and longer, as Emiliano Martinez is suspended following his valiant performance in Lille and Youri Tielemans suffered an injury setback of his own last weekend.
Even so, we’ve been in a strong position going into the final month of the season, and hopefully we still have enough to compete all the way to the finish. That has been the situation for the majority of the season.
Olsen, Diaby set to start for Villa in two changes to Emery’s XI
While it’s hoped Martinez recovers from his own injury blow to feature at the weekend, he’ll play no part in this one as Robin Olsen comes in to deputise and fill that void between the posts.
Although we’ve continued to concede a number of goals when the experienced Swede is on the pitch, there is no doubt that he has shown improvement in his shot-stopping and distribution, while he made a huge late save to ensure we came away with a point at least against Chelsea last Saturday night.
It should be an unchanged backline in front of him which is important to offer consistency and familiarity, with Matty Cash, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres and Lucas Digne getting the nod, while John McGinn is likely to drop back into a deeper midfield role alongside Leon Bailey, Douglas Luiz and Morgan Rogers.
That in turn allows Moussa Diaby to come in to support Ollie Watkins in the final third, and so that’s just two changes to the side that drew with Chelsea last time out.
Diego Carlos in particular will be itching to be involved as he’s been unlucky to miss out in recent games given his excellent display against Arsenal prior to the change, while we’ll have to wait and see if the likes of Zaniolo and Moreno are able to make the matchday squad and boost our depth.
It’s another massive European night at Villa Park, and it’s hoped that Villa are able to get the job done and take a commanding lead into the second leg in Greece next week to give ourselves a real chance of returning to Athens later this month for the Final.
