Aston Villa are ready to get back into action after the international break.
And head coach Dean Smith spoke to the media on Friday morning ahead of tomorrow's Premier League match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Here's what he had to say...
On team news...
“We’re getting healthier. We’ve lost a lot of players during the start of the season and this international window has given us an opportunity to get some back to full fitness.
“We should be welcoming Ollie Watkins back to the fold – he played 15 minutes against Brentford. We’ve also got Leon Bailey back to full fitness now.
“Bertrand Traore has trained the last couple of days as well. John McGinn and Jacob Ramsey have recovered from their Covid-19 situations too.”
On Emiliano Martinez and Emiliano Buendia, Smith said: “They’re back in a green zone country and working hard to get ready for Everton next week.
He added: “Carney Chukwuemeka unfortunately got injured in the England Under-19s game in the week, so he’ll be missing this weekend. Jaden Philogene-Bidace got injured as well with England.”
On Leon Bailey...
“We’ve tracked him for quite a while, since he’s been at Bayer Leverkusen. He’s not disappointed with what he’s shown so far in training.
“He’s trained with us for the last ten days, so he’s fully over the hamstring problem that he had.
“We’re excited to see him in a Villa shirt playing lots of minutes.”
On facing Chelsea…
“They’re Champions League winners, a fantastic team with a fantastic coach. You can see from the start they’ve had that’s it’s going to be a very tough game.
“We’ll go in full of respect for them, but we certainly won’t fear them. We beat them in the last game of last season, but Chelsea had an awful lot of chances in that game.
“We’ll have to be better than we were if we want to get something out of this game.”
On Villa's start to the season…
“It was a little bit indifferent, but we’ve had some situations that we’ve had to deal with. The health of the squad hasn’t been where we’d have liked it to have been.
“We didn’t start the first game very well at all. Building blocks have been put in place now for what’s going to be a tough four-game period.
“We feel we’re a lot healthier and we’re looking forward to it.”
Watch the full pre-match press conference below...
