Sunderland v Aston Villa: predicted line-up, team news and match preview

Aston Villa’s nightmare start has become one of the great tropes of the early part of this Premier League season.

Villa have ticked all the wrong boxes.

Individual performances? Wrong. Tactical approach? Wrong. Attitude? Wrong. Goal tally? Wrong.

Even the most optimistic Villa supporter must be looking at the previous five matches and wondering how we got to this point. From being a kick or two away from scraping a Champions League place in May to zero wins, zero goals in the Premier League and a League Cup exit in mid-September.

Lots of the media attention since the 0-0 draw with Everton has been on the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of Villa’s start. That game solidified everything we’d seen before, ticking the narrative into befuddled soul-searching on Villa’s behalf.

‘How’ and ‘why’ might be good story hooks for outsiders and they’ll make for interesting reading for Villa supporters too, somewhere down the road, but in the here and now, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ don’t matter.

Playtime’s over

As Villa prepare to face a Sunderland team with a couple of home wins under their belt in their first four matches, it’s no longer important how we got here or why we can’t score. All that matters, the only thing on the agenda from the top of the club to the bottom right now, is that it gets fixed.

Villa’s first four games of the season have been subpar to a pretty disgraceful degree. These players, even manager Unai Emery himself, have so much more to give.

We’re four winless games into the Premier League season and the term that’s most often associated with Villa’s name – other than ‘nil’ – is ‘nightmare’.

The time for sulking about PSR or Jacob Ramsey or missing out last season is over. Whatever pressures these players felt about moving or indeed not moving in the summer transfer window have to be set aside. If there’s something going on in the dressing room that none of us knows about, well, you’d better suck it up, lads.

It’s done. It’s over. Villa are a good team full of good players with a good manager and the expectation on them as professionals is that they look at this situation and get it sorted.

Nobody at Villa has made excuses in public but excuses have been proffered for them and I don’t want to hear them or think about them anymore. Each game should be judged and accounted for on its own merit and under-performance across the board has put the club in a hole.

Only the players on the pitch can get us out of it and it’s already long overdue.

Villa team news

Emery hasn’t spoken to the media yet but there are a few pieces of team news we can either know or have a guess at.

Youri Tielemans will remain sidelined by a lower-leg/foot injury for another game or two after Villa’s visit to Sunderland. Ross Barkley has missed a number of games due to a personal issue and we’re unaware of any development on that front this week.

Boubacar Kamara made an unexpected return in midfield off the bench at Brentford and could therefore be available on Sunday, while Amadou Onana was close even before that, according to Emery’s most recent comments about the Belgian international.

The same is true of right-back Andrés García, who could be in line for a return to the bench. Victor Lindelöf missed the Carabao Cup tie at Brentford because of what was described as a minor injury and is assumed to be available for Sunderland.

Villa predicted line-up v Sunderland

Ollie Watkins will return to the side after being rested against Brentford but the matter of who plays in the three spots behind him remains unsettled.

Harvey Elliott has to start, in my opinion, but then I said that before the Everton fixture too. Morgan Rogers is a sure-fire starter and, I think, showed enough off the bench on Tuesday to suggest that he can still do some damage if Villa play in a way that allows him to do so.

Given Villa’s form so far, the degree of difficulty they face on Sunday and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the team’s two left-backs, I think there’s a chance Emery decides to play them both. That would mean Ian Maatsen in the wide attacking position but doubling up defensively too.

But I’m not going to make that assumption in my predicted line-up, which features Emi Buendía instead.

I’m hopeful we’ll see a few different ideas at play on Sunday but I don’t expect wholesale personnel changes.

Villa have conceded few goals outside the usual Crystal Palace aberration and come into this game on the back of a clean sheet in the league and a League Cup game in which the only goal against was a once-in-a-lifetime volley from a weak defensive header from Pau Torres, who doesn’t make the cut for my predicted team anyway.

There may be players back involved in midfield but I can see Emery sticking with what he’s used over the past week. Kamara and Onana aren’t likely to be match-fit, while John McGinn usually gets a place somewhere and Lamare Bogarde has been in superb form.

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