Unai Emery confirms Aston Villa injury blow in defeat at Wolves
Unai Emery has confirmed he substituted Ollie Watkins at half-time against Wolves due to injury.
The striker suffered a muscle problem in the first half of Villa's 2-0 defeat, though Emery is hopeful it will not be "important". He was replaced by Donyell Malen, who was denied an equaliser by VAR as Morgan Rogers - in an offside position - was adjudged to have prevented Nelson Semedo from trying to block John McGinn's cross.
"I changed him because he was feeling a little bit of pain in his muscle," Emery said when asked about Watkins. "Hopefully tomorrow we will test him and assess him and it won’t be anything important. I changed him because of it."
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Asked if Villa will look to sign a striker before Monday's 11pm deadline, Emery responded: "To sign one striker is not easy. We have versatile players and usually Ollie Watkins is consistent playing matches.
"He is strong and recovers well to play matches in a row and during the week. Today he was injured, hopefully it is only small.
"The idea is that if we can replace Jhon Duran with a striker, in case we are convinced he is a potential player to help us in the level we want, we will.
"But we have versatile players, like today Malen. He had two chances to score. We have to compete and we have to get the level we want with the players we have. Hopefully we will add two or three players."
