Aston Villa take on Brentford in the third round of the Carabao Cup tonight and Unai Emery has turned to his new boys to stop the rot.
Villa have been appalling in the Premier League so this League Cup tie is a chance to take the handbrake off, try a few different combinations, and shock an under-performing squad out of its bad habits.
No team selection available to Emery would guarantee improvement – Villa’s problems are more nuanced than that at the moment – but sticking with what isn’t working would be the definition of insanity.
Emery has rung the changes as expected and our predicted team was surprisingly close to reality. The only player I didn’t include who’s been selected to face Brentford this evening is Pau Torres in place of Tyrone Mings.
Villa will have a new-look attack with Donyell Malen getting the start ahead of ex-Brentford striker Ollie Watkins, reaffirming the idea that he is viewed primarily as Villa’s second-choice centre-forward.
Evann Guessand will be involved from the start and so, for the first time as a Villa player, will Harvey Elliott. The Liverpool loanee played just under a quarter of the game against Everton on Sunday and is expected to start in the number 10 position in London tonight.
The third player in Villa’s attacking midfield line is Jadon Sancho, who makes his debut at the Gtech Community Arena.
England international Sancho has demonstrated some incredible quality in his career but none of us really knows what to expect from him at Villa. He could be a shrewd addition. He could be a waste of time. This cup tie will offer the first clues as to which might be the outcome.
Villa lost 1-0 at Brentford in their second game of the Premier League season, when Dango Ouattara went clear of the defence on his Bees debut and benefited from a helpful ricochet to score the only goal of the game.
The form of Emery’s team so far this season has made this game unusually important for an early League Cup tie. This competition is the fourth priority for Villa if it’s any kind of priority at all, but they need to sort themselves out and every passing game is a both a chance to start that process and a pitfall that could make things worse.
Villa must get out of their funk. If that means getting through in the Carabao Cup by digging in, getting a goal and playing a bit better against weakened opponents, so be it.
It’s noteworthy that Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad but the chances of seeing him on the pitch are surely vanishingly small.
Starting XI: Bizot, Cash, Konsa, Torres, Maatsen, McGinn, Bogarde, Elliott, Sancho, Guessand, Malen
Substitutes: Proctor, Mings, Buendía, Watkins, Digne, Jimoh-Aloba, Rogers, Kamara, Borland
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