Aston Villa v Celtic - Matt Maher preview
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Good afternoon from Bodymore Heath. Well as you can tell by the advertising hoardings behind me it's all about the Champions League again this midweek for Aston Villa.
00:10They host Celtic tomorrow in the Battle of Britain. Knowing a win would very likely secure a top 8 finish in the Champions League group phase and send them straight through to the last 16 of the competition.
00:25Now it's significant for Villa because if they were to go straight through to the last 16 they would avoid next month's playoff round.
00:32If they went into the playoff round they'd play 6 matches in the space of 17 days in February.
00:38For a team that's already playing a lot of matches every midweek it seems at the moment they could do with a rest really.
00:46Una Emery was asked about that today in his pre-match press conference and basically kind of played down the fixed congestion and said sometimes it's better to play matches, sometimes it's better to practice but I think he would prefer to not have the congestion next month.
01:04In terms of injury news, well the big news concerns Tyrone Mings. Obviously he suffered a knee injury in Sunday's 1-1 draw with West Ham. Left the pitch in tears then came back in the second half with a smile on his face, put his thumb up to the crowd.
01:21Una Emery confirmed today that it's not as serious as first thought. He wasn't even prepared to rule Mings out of potentially playing tomorrow night against Celtic.
01:30That seems unlikely to be frank. It seems that Mings is likely to miss at least a couple of weeks. I think Mings is a bit of a battler isn't he? He wants to play but I think practically Villa are going to be missing him.
01:45That does leave Edry Comser as we suspected as the only fit centre-back against Celtic. The expectation is that Olukadene will play as a left-back. Obviously Deane is a left-back but with plenty of experience.
02:04You would suspect Emery will go with the experienced head here rather than potentially play Lamar Bogard. Villa still looking to bring in a defender. Obviously Diego Carlos left last week. Emery reiterating today that that was basically down to Carlos essentially that he wanted to leave and he pushed to leave. Villa have come in for some criticism since having let him depart and now Mings gets injured. They're short at the back.
02:30That's the big talking point heading into tomorrow night. The Scottish team hasn't beaten an English team in European competition since 2006. Villa will hope that is still the case tomorrow night. They'll hope for the win which would probably send them through to the last 16 and ease the fixtures congestion for all of us.