McCarthy to Include a Few Fresh Faces at Villa Friday, 24th Nov 2017 16:14 Town boss Mick McCarthy will include "a few fresh faces” when the Blues take on Aston Villa at Villa Park on Saturday afternoon, their third match in eight days and also the third in their run of five games in 15 days. “There will be a few fresh faces in the team tomorrow,” McCarthy confirmed. “It’s nice to have a few more options.” The Town boss had said he planned to make changes for Wednesday’s home game with Sheffield Wednesday but in the end the team was the same as the one which drew 2-2 at Hull last Saturday aside from Myles Kenlock replacing the suspended Jonas Knudsen at left-back. “I said it would be a different team and it was, Myles Kenlock played! I wasn’t lying,” the Blues manager laughed, before confirming that Knudsen would come back into the team having served his ban. Villa beat Sunderland 2-1 at home on Tuesday evening, does McCarthy believe the extra day’s rest will be an advantage for them? “What the fact that they haven’t had to travel and we’ve been to Hull and all that?” McCarthy responded. “I’ve no idea, I’ll tell you on Saturday night. “That’s always the one. How many times have we said that down here? I think Bolton had played a few nights before, I went to watch them, they came down here and ran round like blue-arsed flies for 90 minutes. They didn’t look like it affected them at all. “So I don’t know. I think if we go up there and start well and get into the game, we’ll be full of running whether it affects us later on in the game, I don’t know.”
Given that games are coming thick and fast have he and his staff been able to do much work on the training field? “The players who haven’t been playing and the subs who came on, they had a bit of work yesterday. We’ve just had a small-sided game today. It’s pretty much impossible to do anything else. “But on the other side of that when you’ve played well and the performances have been good, it’s easier just to tick over and say, ‘Right, there you are, we’ll go again’. It might be different personnel but we’ll be playing exactly the same way.” Villa, who are fourth, six points ahead of ninth-placed Town, look a different proposition this season to the team which the Blues beat 1-0 at Villa Park in February. “We are as well,” McCarthy pointed out. “I seem to remember that in February we had a really tough month coming up, we had Villa, Leeds, Brighton, a really tough month. “I think I sat here at the time and said that we’d had a really bad time but that we’d probably be all right in that month and we were. “We started with 3-5-2 and we played really well that day, and of course Emyr Huws got the winner late on. “They might be a different prospect but so are we because I think we’re playing much better than we were last time.” McCarthy saw the game against the Black Cats and says nine-goal winger Albert Adomah was Villa's most impressive performer. “I watched him on Tuesday night against Sunderland he was probably the standout player for them,” he added. “You could say that about any of our front four, they’ve all been playing well, they’re all standing out at the minute. And he’s scoring goals, he’s confident and playing well. He’s quick and he can be direct, so he’s one we’ll have to watch but they’ve a number of good players in their squad.”
After Villa made a slow start to the campaign - they failed to win any of their first three Championship matches - there were calls for manager Steve Bruce to be jettisoned but McCarthy believes the club’s owners made the right decision in sticking with the former Manchester United defender. Villa are currently on a run of seven wins in their last 10 in the league. “At their peril sack Steve Bruce because he’s had to turn it around,” he said. “It would appear there have been lots of mistakes made there in terms of changing managers, signing loads of players and Steve had to get his own players in or get the players that were in there into the mould that he wants, and now he seems to have done that. “It would have been the most ridiculous decision ever to get shot of Steve bearing in mind his track record in the Championship and as a manager as a whole. He’s very good at what he does. “People want change too quickly. If it’s not just going right, it’s ‘Get the manager out!’, but they haven’t done and they’re progressing. I’d imagine they’ll be in the top six at the end of the season.” Bartosz Bialkowski will continue in goal for Town, while McCarthy has few options at centre-half at present with Tommy Smith sidelined with his calf injury, so skipper Luke Chambers and Adam Webster will continue at the heart of the defence. Knudsen will return at left-back for Kenlock, while the Blues manager may swap Jordan Spence for Dominic Iorfa at right-back, as he has done when games have been coming thick and fast previously this season. Callum Connolly and Cole Skuse are again likely to be the midfield pair in front of the defence. McCarthy will be forced into at least one change in the three attacking players behind lone out-and-out striker Joe Garner with David McGoldrick out for a month with the gash to his groin suffered against the Owls. The Town boss may also look to rest one of Bersant Celina or Martyn Waghorn with Huws and Freddie Sears likely to come into the XI. While Huws will be making his first start of the campaign - and his first since joining the club on a permanent basis in the summer - Teddy Bishop could play a part from the bench for the first time this season having recovered from groin surgery. Young Australian Ben Folami is again likely to travel as striker cover. Villa will be without former England skipper John Terry (broken metatarsal), Jonathan Kodjia (ankle) - who it is feared could miss the rest of the season - Scott Hogan (stomach), Gabby Agbonlahor (calf) and Andre Green (hamstring). Villa manager Bruce has a lot of time for his Blues counterpart McCarthy: "We know what to expect from Mick's teams — they've made a very good start. "He's been there five years or so now and in my opinion he's very underrated. He's a very capable, good manager who's been around the block. "You always know what you're going to get when you face his sides — they'll be up and at you. "They'll never give anything up, just like Mick himself. They'll mirror him." Historically, Town have won 19 games between the sides (15 in the league), 14 (12) have ended in draws and Villa have won 23 (19). At Villa Park in February, Emyr Huws’s 83rd minute goal saw Town to a 1-0 win against over the Villans, the Midlanders’ first home defeat of the 2016/17 season. The then-on-loan Cardiff man smashed home his first Blues goal from McGoldrick’s left-wing cross. In September last year at Portman Road, Sears struck the post and Leon Best and Skuse both had the ball cleared off the line in a frantic final few minutes but Town had to be content with a 0-0 draw against Villa. Until the closing stages it had been a close game of few chances but in the end the Blues were unlucky not to claim all three points. No current Blues player has been with Aston Villa, although U18s coach Alan Lee was a youth player at Villa Park. Midfielder Conor Hourihane, who followed his former Town boss Roy Keane to Portman Road in the summer of 2010, is the only Villa player to have been with the Blues. The Corkman was an unused sub for the Town first team on four occasions in 2010/11 but failed to make it on to the pitch. He signed a new six-month deal in the summer of 2011 but joined Plymouth after a trial late in pre-season with new manager Paul Jewell not seeing him as being close to breaking into his first team. Villa striker Keinan Davis had a trial with the Blues academy in November 2015 while a Biggleswade Town player, featuring for the U18s on a couple of occasions, before joining Villa, who had been showing interest prior to his stint at Playford Road, a month later. Saturday’s referee is Tony Harrington, who has shown 61 yellow cards and three red in 17 games so far this season. Harrington’s most recent Town match was the 1-0 defeat at Sheffield United last month in which he booked Knudsen and two home players. Before that he took control of the 2-1 defeat at QPR at the start of January in which he kept his cards in his pocket throughout. Coincidentally, the Cleveland-based official was also in charge of the the 0-0 home draw with Aston Villa at Portman Road in September last year in which he booked Tom Lawrence and one Villan. Harrington had only taken control of three previous Town games before that, most recently the 2-1 defeat at Bristol City in February 2016, in which he booked Kevin Foley and one home player. Prior to that he refereed the 2-1 defeat at Huddersfield in April 2015, in which he booked Smith, Christophe Berra and one Terrier, and the 3-0 Boxing Day 2013 victory at Doncaster in which he yellow-carded just one Rovers player. Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Spence, Iorfa, Knudsen, Kenlock, Chambers, Webster, Woolfenden, Skuse, Connolly, Bru, Huws, Nydam, Downes, Bishop, Ward, Celina, Garner, Sears, Waghorn, Folami.
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