Aston Villa v Juventus FC Pre Match

[Accent Guy]

Kamara pictured in the training photos today.

Good news

Of all the players that we could have out injured, only Martinez is on the same level in terms of being irreplaceable within the team imo.

Vital we get the pre injury Bouba back asap. I suspect the goals against column will get a bit of respite once he is ticking again.

He is absolutely vital to the way we play.

[sid1964]

I wonder if eventually we will play Kamara in a back 3 alongside Pau and Konsa?

Great news if he is back

[jwarry]

Ian Hawkey in The Times today.  Doesn’t sound like it’s gone to plan for Dougie.

“Juventus went to the San Siro and lined up with six midfielders — maybe seven, if you were to offer a proper appreciation of all the skills and territories that Andrea Cambiaso, left back one day, right flank the next, can master.

Or perhaps even eight, if you were to fire back at their head coach, Thiago Motta, a quote he has never been allowed to forget and count Michele di Gregorio. Di Gregorio is Juventus's goalkeeper and, as Motta once put it in a much mocked exposition of his idea of a 2-7-2 formation: “The keeper counts as one of the players in the middle of the pitch.”

As it turned out, Saturday's midfielder-heavy team mustered two shots on target against AC Milan, both from outside the penalty area. That was twice as many as Milan mustered on an evening that did nothing to rescue Serie A's most fabled fixture from its developing reputation as Italy's dullest. It is two nil-nils in succession now for Milan-Juventus and 3½ goalless hours of football since anybody scored in their clashes.

The Juventus midfielder Teun Koopmeiners had at least begun the evening trying to inject suspense. “Where will I be playing tonight?” he teased in a pre-match interview. “We're keeping that as a surprise for Milan.” Bar one imaginative first-half run, the Dutchman proved an ineffective pseudo-striker. Ditto Weston McKennie, periodically cosplaying at centre forward because of injuries to others.

Besides preserving Juventus's unbeaten domestic run, the best outcome for Motta from a night of underwhelming surprises was that Aston Villa, where his side go in the Champions League on Wednesday, stay mystified about what sort of Juventus they should prepare for.
Almost certainly, it will be a team lacking the footballer Villa know best, Douglas Luiz, who spent Saturday observing Motta's midfield mosaic from distance and wondering where in the hierarchy he fits. Sixth choice? Seventh? Top ten? He'd certainly have envied the praise being showered on Khéphren Thuram, the 23-year-old Frenchman who joined along with him in the summer and outshone all the other midfielders. “Khéphren is the kind of player every coach wants in his squad,” Motta said with enthusiasm.“He's showed so much improvement, a great mentality and strength.”

Douglas Luiz is yet to receive similar tributes. The Brazilian, on whose purchase Juventus committed more than €50million (£41.6 million) in a complicated summer deal with Villa, has been out of action with muscle fatigue since October. Even before then, his grasp on a first-team place was tenuous. Motta picked him to start only two of the first ten games this season and soon found himself asking supporters not to scapegoat Douglas Luiz when, twice in the space of four days, he came on for the last half-hour of matches and gave away penalties. Against RB Leipzig, Juventus recovered from the setback for a stirring 3-2 win. Against Cagliari, his rash challenge meant a lead became a draw.

Thus the lowlights of a move freighted with great expectations. Douglas Luiz, it was supposed, could fulfil many of the tasks previously assigned to Paul Pogba, whose positive drug test last season terminated his relationship with Juventus. He'd be an all-round galvaniser who would win the ball and expertly deliver it to the flair, wide players such as Timothy Weah, the newcomers Chico Conceição and Nico González, and the Turkish prodigy Kenan Yildiz. Here was a midfielder who had helped to transform Villa into a club ready for elite European combat, a player whose international career had been revived, and who, at 26, seemed to be peaking.

Douglas Luiz was also an opportunity, a sale Villa felt obliged to make to comply with Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PRS). Having complained long and loud about how PSR is formulated, Villa ended up doing the deal with a club who themselves spent last season serving a ban from Uefa tournaments for having breached Financial Fair Play (FFP).
Deal done, Villa were promptly pitted directly against the former FFP felons in Uefa's principal competition. To this catalogue of ironies, January may yet add another. So alarmed are Juventus by their extensive injury list that winter offers for Douglas Luiz will be listened to if his outbound transfer could raise enough in funds for a new centre back.

That position was expertly patrolled by Gleison Bremer through the six clean sheets that began Motta's Serie A tenure with Juventus. In early October, Bremer tore his ACL and although Juventus have remained hard to beat, they suddenly looked leakier without him. Inter Milan put four past them in an eight-goal epic. A 100 per cent start in Europe gave way, after Bremer's injury, to points dropped thanks to inattentive marking against Stuttgart and Lille.

Still, a yield of seven points at the midway stage of the Champions League's first phase would be just about par for a club returning from Uefa banishment and under a head coach in his debut European campaign. For Motta, headhunted from Bologna in June, Wednesday's contest is a special test of European savvy, up against a specialist in that arena in Unai Emery, who was the last of the many distinguished coaches to have given instructions to Motta, the player, while they coincided at Paris Saint-Germain.

Back then, Emery identified Motta as a manager-in-the-making, endorsing his post-retirement appointment as PSG's under-19 coach and noting the forthright dressing-room voice of the former Barcelona, Inter and Italy midfielder. They were not always in agreement. On retiring at PSG, Motta spoke publicly of Emery's “wanting to control everything” as a barrier to players “being leaders and expressing themselves and taking responsibility”. In his early days in charge of the under-19s, he put on record that left-field idea of the 2-7-2 formation, prompting raised eyebrows and some giggles before Motta could explain that he meant his chalkboard arrangement of players, goalkeeper included, should be read vertically, left-middle-right, not, as is convention, as an innumerate description of two in defence, seven in midfield, two in attack.

In three full seasons on Serie A touchlines, with Spezia and then as low-budget alchemist at Bologna, Motta proved himself the real deal, neither zany nor excessively conformist. Juventus saw a young coach, 42, tailored for the rebranding of a scandal-hit institution and for the major rejuvenation of the so-called Old Lady. This is a Juventus whose most recent Champions League line-up, for the 1-1 draw with Lille, had an average age nearly six years younger than the Juve side who, when the club were last playing in the European Cup, in 2022-23, lost to Maccabi Haifa on the way to a group phase exit.

Right now, Motta has to be pragmatic. The midfield overload at Milan was largely motivated by the absence, with fitness problems, of his No9, Dusan Vlahovic, who is doubtful for Villa Park, and of Arkadiusz Milik, the back-up centre forward who, along with González, is out until at least next month. The

Emery with Motta, who will be his opposite number in the Villa Park dugout on Wednesday, during their time together with PSG when the Juventus coach was still a player left back Juan Cabral has meanwhile joined Bremer among the long-term injured. At full-strength, Motta's Juventus may have a domestic trophy in them. At threadbare, he is left to talk up the character they've shown in adversity and through several 0-0 draws.”
  

[Mister E]

Ian Hawkey in The Times today.  Doesn’t sound like it’s gone to plan for Dougie.

“Juventus went to the San Siro and lined up with six midfielders ... they've shown in adversity and through several 0-0 draws.”

All nicely sweating up to a 5-5 draw, then.

[eamonn]

Interesting article but don't be a cvnt by quoting it all.

[Demitri_C]

Feel sorry for Dougie, sad for him that it hasn't worked out for him. I am surprised he has flopped there

[darren woolley]

I'm really looking forward to this game I just hope we beat them.

[Demitri_C]

Sams Darren. A win over juventus  really could kick start our season

[Chico Hamilton III]

I dug out my 1983 Juventus programme the other day to show my son. The programme cost 42p and the ticket was £4.50 - for a European Cup 1/4 final.

[sid1964]

When you look at that Juventus side from 1983, how did they not win the European Cup that season after they beat us.

That is the best away side I have seen in my time going to Villa, full of world class players.

[Chico Hamilton III]

When you look at that Juventus side from 1983, how did they not win the European Cup that season after they beat us.

That is the best away side I have seen in my time going to Villa, full of world class players.

Essentially it was the Italian 1982 World Cup winning team with Platini and Boniek bolted on.

[PeterWithe]

When you look at that Juventus side from 1983, how did they not win the European Cup that season after they beat us.

That is the best away side I have seen in my time going to Villa, full of world class players.

If I remember correctly they lost to Hamburg who scored with the one shot they had.

[Duncan Shaw]

When you look at that Juventus side from 1983, how did they not win the European Cup that season after they beat us.

That is the best away side I have seen in my time going to Villa, full of world class players.

Essentially it was the Italian 1982 World Cup winning team with Platini and Boniek bolted on.

It was, and I'd agree, the best team I have have ever seen in the flesh at VP.  And we gave 'em a game!! Sid and Gary Shaw were superb.

[dorsetvillian]

Agreed, what a team Juve had in 83. If I remember there were several stabbings before or after the game.

[Tuscans]

No Villa Park return for Douglas Luiz tomorrow - he's not included in Juventus' squad. Neither is Dušan Vlahović.