Just like the majority of the Premier League, Aston Villa remain in the hunt for a top-four finish, with Saturdays 2-1 win over Chelsea a major shot in the arm for the hopes of successive finishes in the Champions League places.
With only seven points separating fourth-placed Manchester City and Brentford in 11th, the top half of the Premier League table is extremely congested and Villa are one of several teams that will be scrapping for points during the run-in in the hope of securing European football next term.
Next up for Unai Emerys men is a Tuesday night trip to a Crystal Palace side that have won three of their last five Premier League matches.
Will Morgan Rogers be available on Tuesday for Aston Villa?
With Villa still competing on three fronts their squad is set to be tested in the coming weeks, so there was concern when in-form Morgan Rogers was taken off during the second half of the win over Chelsea at the weekend.
This is something Emery picked up on during his Monday press conference as he discussed the fitness of Rogers and Tyrone Mings, who was also forced off.
The idea is to have subs performing well as well when we are not having every player available to play, said the Villa chief, who was ranked at No.6 in FourFourTwo's list of the best managers in the world last year. One of those is Morgan Rogers, but in case he is not available for tomorrow of course we are going to use another player and believe in our squad to help in the moment we will need them.
We are going to train this afternoon and after we are going to travel to Palace. We will see. I dont know exactly. We played on Saturday and did a bit effort physically and mentally. We have to recover physically and our energy is going to be very important tomorrow.
Rogers, who is valued at 40million by Transfermarkt, has started all but one of Villas 27 Premier League games this season, scoring six times and providing four assists.
He is playing a lot of minutes because physically he can do it, Emery said following the Chelsea win. But today, he had a kick and was asking me to replace him. Hopefully, its not for a long time. Hopefully, he can play on Tuesday at Palace.
Emery also confirmed Mings is a doubt, but had better news regarding Ezri Konsa who is fit against, while loan star Axel Disasi is available again after being forced to sit out the match against parent club Chelsea.
Boubacar Kamara, Amadou Onana and Pau Torres are on the comeback trail, but are not yet ready to feature, while Ross Barkley could return to the bench.
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