Burton Albion vs Aston Villa: Steve Bruce due to make changes for cup clash
There is rarely any let-up during the marathon of an EFL season, yet the opening weeks in particular can be noticeably frantic.
Tonight’s Carabao Cup tie at Burton is Villa’s seventh game in the space of 23 days since they kicked off the campaign with a Monday night league trip to Hull.
Barely had boss Steve Bruce had time to digest the disappointment of Sam Baldock’s last-gasp penalty for Reading on Saturday, before attentions were already turning to the Pirelli Stadium.
“Only in England do you get a schedule like this,” remarked the manager last week.
With a tough-looking Championship fixture at Sheffield United, the result of which will go a long way to defining Villa’s first month, looming at the weekend, major changes to the team are both inevitable and sensible.
“There’ll be big changes,” Bruce promised on Saturday. “The schedule is ridiculous when everyone is just trying to find their feet and get going. To have our seventh game in three-and-a-half weeks is nonsense. So it is what it is, but there will be big changes.”
Neither has the constant procession of matches been ideal for a team which, for the moment, remains in transition.
Things which would usually be worked out on the training pitch have instead been played out in the public eye.
“You maybe don’t get the time to develop in training, so you have to use the games for all they are worth,” remarked goalkeeper Orjan Nyland, one of several new faces to have arrived through the doors in the past month.
In truth, Nyland is one of the players almost certain to be rested at Burton, with back-up Andre Moreira instead given the opportunity to build his own experience.
Tommy Elphick, who has had to make do with a place on the bench in the Championship, is again likely to captain an XI made up of fringe players, along with a smattering of young talent.
Jack Grealish (dead leg) and John McGinn (knee) will almost certainly not be risked after picking up minor knocks at the weekend.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Villa gave this competition their full attention. Those days, for now, are gone, with the main ambitions for the season lying elsewhere.
Yet even while Burton can no longer described as unfamiliar opponents, having hosted Bruce’s men in the last two Championship campaigns, this is still a fixture where in Villa’s case a defeat would only bring with it serious embarrassment.
The Brewers, like their more vaunted visitors, are experiencing something of a transitional period, as they adapt to life back in League One following relegation last term.
Theirs is going rather less successfully than Villa’s, with Nigel Clough’s team having tasted defeat in four of their opening five league fixtures.
Likely line-ups:
Aston Villa (4-3-3): Moreira, De Laet, Elphick, Tuanzebe, Taylor, Doyle-Hayes, Lansbury, Hourihane, Green, Hepburn-Murphy, El-Ghazi.
Subs: Chester, Bree, O’Hare, Adomah, Kodjia, McKirdy, Bunn (gk)
Burton: Bywater, Brayford, Buxton, McFadzean, Turner, Fraser, Quinn, Fox, Akins, Sordell, Boyce.
