14/5Aston Villa (4-2-3-1): Emiliano Martínez; Ezri Konsa; Diego Carlos; Pau Torres; Lucas Digne; Youri Tielemans; Douglas Luiz; Leon Bailey; Moussa Diaby; John McGinn; Ollie Watkins;
Liverpool (4-3-3): Alisson; Trent Alexander-Arnold; Jarell Quansah; Virgil van Dijk; Joe Gomez; Harvey Elliott; Wataru Endo; Alexis Mac Allister; Mohamed Salah; Cody Gakpo; Luis Díaz;
Today Aston Villa can finally put an end to the dispute with Tottenham for the fourth place in the English Premier League. However, it won’t be easy for Unai Emery to decide everything today, as his team is in a mini-crisis and the opponent is Liverpool in Jurgen Klopp’s last visit as a manager in England.
This season we rarely see Aston Villa helpless, but that has been the case since the beginning of May. The team has lost in three consecutive games in which the opponent was simply better. On Thursday, the Villans suffered another collapse against Olympiacos in the UEFA Conference League semifinal, which they lost by a total score of 2-6. A week ago, Aston Villa played perhaps their worst game of the season in England and miraculously lost only by a goal margin away at Brighton.
Liverpool failed to keep up the pace at the top and surrendered the title battle to Man City and Arsenal. Relieved of the pressure, however, the team’s players are inspired to honour the last games with Jurgen Klopp as their manager. A week ago, the Merseysiders totally dominated Tottenham at home and easily took a 4-0 lead before an hour of play had elapsed. Somewhere in there, however, Richarlison came into play, which led to a reversal of the initiative and two goals for Spurs, who had enough good attacks until the end with which they could have even equalized.
In September, Jurgen Klopp had no difficulty overcoming Unai Emery in the coaching clash in a 3-0 success for Liverpool at Anfield. However, Aston Villa are a solid home side and Liverpool have won in just 50% of their away league games. The problem for the Villans, however, is that they had too many games in short period of time, and the players are not used to such a busy end of season cycle, and at this important time, the injured players for Emery are not few. Aston Villa have looked endlessly tired and helpless in their recent games, and a rested Liverpool, with all their best, are chasing a decent end to the season.