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Crystal Palace could be without five key players at Aston Villa
Aston Villa will welcome Crystal Palace to Villa Park for the second time this season, once the domestic campaign returns to action on the other side of this final international break of 2024. Villa will entertain Palace having been knocked out of the EFL Cup by the Eagles, who have struggled this term in the Premier League.
The summer brought about change for Palace; after a sterling end to last season, they lost defender Joachim Andersen to Fulham and Michael Olise to Bayern Munich, although they did retain key trio Eberechi Eze, Adam Wharton and Marc Guehi. In the place of the outgoing Andersen and Olise, they signed Trevoh Chalobah from Chelsea and Eddie Nketiah from Arsenal.
In that 2-1 win over Villa, in which Jhon Duran's goal wasn't enough after strikes from Eze and Daichi Kamada, both playmaker Eze and midfielder Wharton were both forced off with injuries. The former has a hamstring problem and the latter has undergone surgery to solve a groin issue. Both players are expected to be out until the beginning of December, and therefore it's anticipated that the Villa game will come too soon for the pair.
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Added to those issues, manager Oliver Glasner has further headaches; Eddie Nketiah missed the defeat to Fulham this past weekend with a hamstring problem of his own, and he'll find himself in a race against time to return in time for that second clash in B6. Fellow summer signing Kamada was shown a straight red card against Fulham, too, and will begin his suspension after the international break at Villa. There are worries, too, over the fitness of Jefferson Lerma, who has missed the last two games with hamstring woe.
"We took the final decision [on Wharton], he will have surgery," Glasner said recently. "He tried [training] but the pain is too much and then it makes no sense. He has really struggled in the last weeks and months. So now we took the decision to have the surgery, and we hope to have him back after maybe four weeks."
Villa, of course, don't exactly have a clean bill of health themselves; they were without Ross Barkley and Matty Cash in the defeat at Liverpool on Saturday night, while Jacob Ramsey and Boubacar Kamara sustained injuries during the 2-0 reverse at Anfield. All four players are in a race against time to return and be available to Unai Emery for the Palace clash. Villa will also hope that their range of international stars return from duty in a healthy condition.
