Aston Villa are a total mess right now, and thus the pressure on manager Unai Emery is ramping up. They’ll head to Sunderland sitting in the table’s penultimate place, somewhere that no one expected them to be. Emery will be dealing with several availability concerns as the likes of Victor Lindelof, Ross Barkley, Youri Tielemans, Amadou Onana and Andres Garcia could all miss out tomorrow.
Let’s break it all down for you, starting with Lindelof.
Aston Villa at Sunderland FYIs
Kickoff: Sun Sept. 21, 2pm, Stadium of Light, Sunderland, UK
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Premier League Standing, Form: Aston Villa 19th, 2 pts, DLLD Sunderland 7th, 7 pts, WLWD
Google Result Probability: Aston Villa 45% Draw 29% Sunderland 26%
Aston Villa Team News
The Swedish central defender missed out on the shoot out loss at Brentford, in the EFL Cup third round, on Tuesday.
Lindelof has an unspecified knock of some sort, with Emery saying after the cup elimination: “It is a small injury, but maybe in a few days he will be available again. Today, he was not.”
So he should be in contention for the weekend. Emery also sounded optimistic about a trio of injured players returning to the fold, and soon:
“We have some players injured, they are close to coming back, like Garcia, (Boubacar) Kamara and Amadou Onana.”
We’ll see if any of them are back for tomorrow, but most likely probably not. Garcia is extremely mysterious. No one really knows what’s going with him.
Moving on to Barkley, he had been missing games due to his having to build up full 90 minutes match fitness. But now he’s missing time due to an undisclosed personal issue. Again there is not a ton of information out there about it.
And then finally with Tielemans, Emery said that the midfielder is going to miss some matches, so he’s effectively ruled out here.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter