Villa – Preston; Lansbury to be our saviour?

Yesterday, the Evening Mail came out with a handy little tool that allows you to build your team and share it.
Hence I’ve nicked it and it’s as you see above.
It includes Elphick in defence, as it seemed at the time that Nathan Baker wasn’t going to make it. It now seems that he might be fit though and if he is, you’d expect him to start.
Rumour has it the young Andre Green might feature for this one and if he does, I’d put him straight in as he crossed a lot more than we’d seen earlier in the game.
There could be an argument for going with Grealish and bringing Green on later I suppose, but no, I’d put him in from the off.
I’ve gone for Tshibola in the middle, as I think he’s looked the liveliest, but you could go with Gardner, who’s worked well previously with Henri Lansbury, our great new hope.

Lansbury is a great signing and at somewhere between £2.8 and £3.5 million, a very good piece of business as hopefully we’ll see a bit more dynamism better linking with the attack
But we have to be realistic I think, as the player hasn’t actually played since early December, which means he might not be quite match-fit. Hence I’m not going to set my expectations too high.
How good would it be to see him get a goal on his debut, though?

The only other debatable position is Gabby upfront.
That’s not something I’d choose, of course, but it’s what I suspect Steve Bruce might go with.
I’ve said before that I think there’s something not right about McCormack, where the player’s not happy or Bruce just doesn’t rate him.
Not that it makes much difference as we’ve hardly had any shots on target in the last few games.
Now I’ve said that, watch Bruce decide to go with a two up front, although I don’t see who makes way.

Preston are doing nicely thank you and are in ninth place with three points more.
They have a good away record and haven’t lost away in 8 games.
Which should be interesting, as we haven’t lost at home at all this season, so one of those runs could end today.

So how do I see it all going?
Preston don’t tend to have much possession and when we do, we don’t have a clue what to do with it.

It’s got to be a draw for me and probably 0-0.
That’s a bit under-ambitious, I know, but it’s better than the sneaky feeling I have that says we’re going to get beat.
I just don’t see where the goals are going to come from and if you’re not scoring, you’re putting yourself under the cosh before you start.
That said, with Lansbury playing, we might actually see some movement and link-up play to get the sriker(s) involved a bit more.
Fingers crossed.

Preston’s player to watch?
Well it’s got to be Callum Robinson hasn’t it?
Their top scorer and we gave him away for £50k. Another brilliant piece of Villa business, eh?