Aston Villa are in a position Wolves can only dream of but that doesn’t mean Emery allowed complacency to slip into his thinking. Though he believes Saturday’s match will be tough for his side.
Emery touched on Wolves’ strong record against the league’s top six last term. Gary O’Neil’s men secured wins over Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham. He is among the world’s most gifted managers. He has done an amazing job at Aston Villa.
The Villans were clinging to the bottom when Emery came in Birmingham in October 2022. But he orchestrated a seventh-place finish. After qualifying for the Champions League the next season, the Spaniards went one further. They defeated Young Boys 3-0 to start the campaign.
Even if Wolves’ chances of beating Aston Villa on Saturday are slim, Unai Emery has given them plenty of reasons to be wary of their opponents. With a difficult start to the season, Wolves cannot afford to be self-pitying ahead of their match against rivals Aston Villa.
The Wanderers’ 2-1 loss to Newcastle on Sunday may have been unlucky. Given how two late long-range screamers from Fabian Schar and Harvey Barnes changed the course of the match.
Because of this, Paul Merson thinks Wolves have been “unlucky” this season. But it doesn’t change their current situation after they have taken one point from their first four games
“You have to respect every team and if you want to win then you have to focus and be demanding yourself. The first objective in every match we are facing is to have respect.
“They have a good coach, a good team, good players. They are very competitive. They beat last year away Chelsea and Tottenham.
“They played very well against us here and competed well. It is the same coach. They played very well against Nottingham Forest and even losing they deserved more against Newcastle.”
Coming into this match, it’s difficult to see anything other than a home win, with Paul Merson and Chris Sutton both predicting Wolves to lose. That said, there are reasons to be confident of O’Neil’s men pulling off an upset..
The Wolves have the upper hand in recent meetings, with the Wanderers tasting just three defeats from their last 10 matches in this fixture. It’s a record that doesn’t hold much weight currently but recent form can often go out of the window in a derby match.
Wolves were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Brighton on Wednesday night as Goncalo Guedes was labelled ‘excellent’ by O’Neil. There were some notable omissions from the squad in that clash as defenders Rayan Ait-Nouri and Toti Gomes missed out through injury.
In Friday’s pre-match conference ahead of the trip to Villa Park, O’Neil provides an injury update on Ait-Nouri and Toti. The Wolves boss claim they would both require late assessments to determine whether they’re fit enough to make the squad.
He did reveal that Boubacar Traore would be out till December with a knee injury that he picked up in the 2-0 win over Burnley.
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