Monaco vs Aston Villa - Matt Maher preview
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00:00Good evening from Monaco, Villa back in Champions League action tomorrow night and are looking
00:08to take a big step towards the last 16 of the competition.
00:12We know Emery's team know that a win tomorrow would not mathematically secure their place
00:20in the top 8 of the huge league table but it would go a long way towards doing so ahead
00:26of next week's game against Celtic which of course rounds off the group stage.
00:30Emery tonight saying he wants to take any mathematical permutations completely out of
00:34the equation.
00:36His target is to win both games and he knows that's going to be easier said than done.
00:41Emery managed in France Paris Saint-Germain, Monaco, he knows they're a tough side and
00:47big opportunity for Monaco as well tomorrow.
00:50A draw for them would almost virtually see them through to the knockout phases while
00:53a win would keep alive their hopes of going straight through to the last 16 as well.
00:59Their manager Addy Hooter earlier in the day saying they wouldn't be playing for the draw
01:02he said we're not an Italian team we're going to go for the win.
01:06So tomorrow should be a decent game.
01:09Now you might have expected a lot of the talk tonight in the press conference to be about
01:12John Duran because there have been reports today from pretty reliable sources that West
01:17Ham have had a bid rejected but there's some conjecture or should we say some debate over
01:23the exact size of that bid.
01:24There has been a bid from West Ham, it has been rejected or more precisely ignored.
01:30Villa are adamant that it's nowhere close to the £57m that has been reported in some
01:36places and even if it was £57m that would still be some way below their valuation of
01:43Duran.
01:44Of course he's scored 12 goals in all competitions this season and has signed a new contract
01:49since being the subject of interest from West Ham in the summer.
01:52Una Emery didn't take questions on the bid for Duran and essentially Villa feel that
01:58it's not an issue that the manager needs to be discussing, Duran is not for sale.
02:03This month their stance has not changed and there is some anger internally that this story
02:09has come out on the eve of such a big Champions League game.
02:13Well Duran is likely to feature tomorrow so it will be interesting to see what happens
02:17because when he's in the headlines he tends to do something interesting so we'll see what
02:25happens.