The Thriller In Meh Villa

Netz and Taiwo back.
Newcastle are also quite shit.
That's all I've got.

Having a full back playing full back will be a huge help though. Cunha (or Morato / Murillo) aren't full backs.

I think we could see MGW on Sunday. In 3 days the swelling will have gone down, and they will pump him full of pain killers. Whether we should be playing him is a different question altogether. If he reopens the stitches he could be left with a bad scar.

You think he's not already going to be left with a huge scar across his forehead?

You'd hope that Murillo woud be close to playing on Sunday as well. No optimism on Sangare, NDoye, or Aina though.

I know it's whinging but it's still mad that we had to play on Monday when they played on Sunday.

And now we're playing again on Sunday, but Spurs don't play until Monday.

It's almost like there's an agenda that they'd like to try and gently nudge in the direction of....

We don't get Monday games since we banned Gary Neville.

Fair exchange / no robbery.

Maybe not Bobbins. Paul Taylor says " When he did come off the bench for a brief cameo in the 88th minute. Murillo felt some fresh discomfort in the hamstring injury that had sidelined him in recent weeks,"

The Arse will beat West Ham anyway so all this becomes moot.

Nor Abbot

I am (true to type) nervous about this.

They also played 3-5-2 and flooded the central midfield, a deliberate ploy to overrun our two in there. It's why teams dropped 4-4-2 in the first place, as they were losing the CM battle to teams with three central midfielders. Much as Vitor and his team completely out-thought Sunderland with their tactics, Unai did it to Forest.

And it's not just MGW we missed - ostensibly five of our first-choice XI were missing through injury (Aina, Murillo, Sangare, MGW, CHO), plus the back-up RB in Abbott, so had to rejig the defence..
Villa played the ressies at the weekend and got away with it - not worrying about the league points as they are fairly secure in the top five.
We didn't have the squad depth for that and had to start three who would play v Villa, with a plan to swap with another three Villa starters at half-time (Cunha, Nico, Igor off for Milenkovic, Elliot, MGW). Unfortunately, MGW then got injured and we had to bring on both Neco and Wood as injury subs.
Again, a combination of bad luck, and different managers picking the two Euro squads.

Savona is the third fb in the europa squad and must have got injured really soon after the squad was finalised, which hasn't helped (not that i rate him highly but he's better there than Abbott or Cunha).