Unai Emery seeking improvement with success on the road vital to Aston Villa

Tuesday’s trip to Crystal Palace is the first of three straight games on the road for Unai Emery’s team and the first time they have left the West Midlands since visiting Monaco in the Champions League last month.

Villa have lost six of their last eight league matches away from home and the fact seven of their remaining 11 games are away highlights the urgent need for improvement.

“How we can compete away is always my challenge when I am facing each match,” said Emery. 

“Sometimes we are doing fantastic, reminding ourselves our last three away matches were at Everton when we won 1-0, we played good. 

“Arsenal we drew and competed fantastic in a very tough match. Wolverhampton was very difficult, very difficult and we did not compete enough to get something there. Tomorrow, Crystal Palace, it is always very difficult to beat them there.”

Emery recalled the “horrible” experience of last season’s 5-0 final day defeat at Palace, a result which stands as the heaviest loss of his Villa reign, albeit the loss was largely down to players having mentally checked out with Champions League football secured.

Yet the boss also observed how Selhurst Park has rarely been a happy hunting ground for any Villa team over the years. 

Just twice since 1980 have Villa tasted victory against Palace at the ground. Oliver Glasner’s team, meanwhile, were unbeaten in two trips to Villa Park this season, claiming a 2-1 win in the Carabao Cup before a 2-2 draw in the league.

Emery, who is desperate to make his team more solid, explained how his first priority will be on restricting the home side.

“A lot of players played there in recent years and were not successful with the result,” he said.

“Sometimes when you are preparing one match you are trying to impose, impose, impose your gameplan, tactically, offensively and defensively, dominate with our positioning and trying to use our skill. 

“Now I analyse more how we can stop them, how we can compete and starting to stop them and trying to reduce their capacity to dominate the match like they want and like they did here, more or less, when we played at Villa Park. Then we want to play with personality.”

Axel Disasi is back available after missing Saturday’s 2-1 win over parent club Chelsea and likely to partner Ezri Konsa at the back in what will be Villa’s 12th different centre-half pairing of the season.

Emery was due to make late calls on both Morgan Rogers and Tyrone Mings after both were forced off with injury at the weekend. Pau Torres remains out along with midfield trip Boubacar Kamara, Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley, with the latter revealing he has been dealing with torn knee ligaments.