Aston Villa told to brace for Leicester City Carabao Cup backlash

Villa face the Foxes for the first time since beating their Midlands rivals over two legs in January’s cup semi-final.

Leicester, who have spent the season riding high in the Premier League, had gone into the tie as big favourites only to go down 3-2 on aggregate, with winger Marc Albrighton last week admitting they were guilty of taking Villa too lightly.

Smith believes opposite number Brendan Rodgers is now likely to use the cup defeat as motivation for his players tonight.

He said: “Someone told me about Marc Albrighton’s comments they probably took us too lightly, after beating us 4-1 in the league back in December.

“They felt they were going to progress in the cup, so we certainly need to be ready for that backlash.”

Villa went on to lose 2-1 to Manchester City at Wembley earlier this month and the attention is now all on their Premier League survival battle, with the trip to the King Power Stadium offering the chance to climb out of the bottom three.

Smith’s men have lost all four matches since beating the Foxes in the cup yet a victory tonight would see them climb over Watford, Bournemouth and West Ham and up to 16th in the table.

The boss, however, insists he has not taken too much time studying the standings.

“I don’t look at it (the table). The players may look at it, I don’t know,” he said.

“As far as I am concerned we have 11 games left and if we win them, we are comfortable. If we win one, we are out of the bottom three.

“It is certainly not all doom and gloom, though it is not where I wanted to be, obviously. But we can do something about it and the players know they can do something about it too.”

Smith must decide whether to stick with the four-man backline which battled impressively against City, or revert to the three-man defence which had been utilised since the start of the year and in both cup meetings with the Foxes.

There is also the dilemma of who to play in goal, with Orjan Nyland having once again performed impressively while on cup duty.

Pepe Reina has started all five Premier League matches since joining on loan from AC Milan but experienced his poorest performance in his most recent outing, the 2-0 defeat at Southampton.

Former Leicester midfielder Danny Drinkwater is back available after being cup-tied at Wembley.

The on loan Chelsea man has played just once since the 2-1 win over Watford on January 21 and is yet to complete 90 minutes for Villa.

Last week’s 1-0 FA Cup win over Blues was Leicester’s first in six matches in all competitions and the Foxes have lost a little of their momentum from earlier in the campaign.

But Smith said: “They’ve dropped off a bit but teams do when you have to play Manchester City and they have had to do that.

“They didn’t get the result at Norwich last time out, though they played well enough to get the result.

“Their performances have been good though they have probably had some inconsistent results. Brendan has done fantastically there. They are a very good team and very good to watch. We know we are going to have to be on our toes.”

Smith is hopeful Villa have taken heart from their performance in the final as they search for the consistency which has eluded them all term.

“I sensed before the Tottenham game last month we were right on it and that is why I gave the players such a tongue-lashing after the Southampton game, because it was unlike us,” he said.

“If we get Tottenham and Man City performances, we will be OK.

“There are big games coming up but we’re not fearing them at all.”