Villa manager’s selection dilemma
Friday 22nd October 2010, 3:00PM BST.
Villa manager Gerard Houllier faces a selection dilemma for the Premier League game at Sunderland.
Marc Albrighton, Emile Heskey and Richard Dunne are all set to be available for the trip to the Stadium of Light tomorrow.
his leaves question marks hanging over the places of Stephen Ireland, John Carew and Ciaran Clark, who stepped in for last weekend’s goalless draw with Chelsea.
Houllier said: “I like to have these decisions week in, week out. This is not a headache for me. This is a good thing. Once you have competition for places, it is healthy. It makes the players progress.
“They don’t just sit and relax they have to give 100 per cent.
“It is not a good time to get sick or injured!”
Houllier believes the fact those players had to step in at such short notice and still get a result is a sign of their positive progress.
He added: “A good friend of mine said our main progress is we had to replace three players from the Friday to the Saturday as well as losing a key player during the game in Richard Dunne.
“That is four players, more than one third of the team we had to change, and still we managed to deliver that sort of performance.”
Eyebrows were raised in some quarters when Houllier replaced the injured Dunne with Clark, rather than Carlos Cuellar, in last weekend’s draw with Chelsea but the Frenchman has now revealed his reasons for doing so.
He added: “I brought on Ciaran because you would have to reshuffle the whole defence and put Cuellar, who is more experienced than Ciaran, on the right and put James to the left and that is two changes instead of one.
“It is better to have just one and keep faith in the players.”
UK Sport
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