Two Aston Villa signings suffer Champions League squad heartbreak
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery has left Donyell Malen and Andres Garcia out of his squad for the Champions League knockout rounds.
UEFA rules stipulate that Villa could only add three new players to the squad which they named for the league phase, despite letting go of six players from List A in the winter window. Only clubs whose domestic league start and finish in the same calendar year have the possibility of adding more than three players.
Villa signed five players in the winter window, starting with Malen and Garcia for a combined £26m. Then, three loan moves were completed in as many days at the end of the window as Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi all signed on.
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Villa have the option to buy Rashford permanently for £40m in the summer, while Paris Saint-Germain are thought to be open to allowing Villa to extend the loan for Asensio into next season. Disasi, however, has signed on a straight loan move and rejected other offers to link up with Emery.
"The rules are that we can register three changes," Emery said. "We did more changes in the transfer window than we wanted. We lost one player more in the list as Jaden Philogene was a club-trained player.
"We lost as well the opportunity through him to have one more [player in the squad]. We changed five players and only we can register three. We had to take the decision yesterday.
"They are out Andres Garcia and Donyell Malen. It was not a good decision I had to take. I spoke to Andres and Malen to tell them the decision. I argued my decision with them."
Villa progressed to the Champions League round of 16 by finishing eighth in the league phase table following a win over Celtic last week. They will play one of Borussia Dortmund, Atalanta, Club Brugge or Sporting in the round of 16, before a clash against either Liverpool or Barcelona would await if they progress to the quarter finals.
