Manager Unai Emery has named his team for Aston Villa’s Premier League match against Arsenal this afternoon.
Villa have won their last six matches in all competitions and face the Premier League leaders at Villa Park knowing that a win would move them to within three points of the Gunners.
Emery has made some unexpected changes but has kept faith with Ian Maatsen at left-back, presumably with a view to dealing with Arsenal’s pacy wide threat.
Former Arsenal goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez returns to the team after missing Wednesday’s win at Brighton & Hove Albion with injury, so Marco Bizot drops back down to the substitutes’ bench. George Hemmings is there too.
And no, Harvey Elliott isn’t in the squad.
The decision over which of Villa’s four firstish-choice central midfielders has been swerved on this occasion by picking them all.
I’m not expecting a fundamental tactical change – Boubacar Kamara and Amadou Onana will play in a double pivot – but the deployment of John McGinn and Youri Tielemans behind striker Ollie Watkins shows an understandable degree of conservatism in Villa’s approach today.
Morgan Rogers will drift towards the left but generally plays a lot of positional freedom anyway.
Starting XI: Martínez, Cash, Konsa, Torres, Maatsen, Onana, Kamara, Tielemans, McGinn, Rogers, Watkins
Substitutes: Bizot, Lindelöf, Digne, García, Bogarde, Hemmings, Buendía, Malen, Sancho
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