Unai Emery outlines Aston Villa midfielder fitness latest ahead of Europa League final

Boss Unai Emery revealed Villa will make a late fitness call on midfielder Amadou Onana for the Europa League final.

Influential midfielder Onana has been out for several weeks with a calf injury after limping out of the semi-final first leg defeat at Nottingham Forest.

The 24-year-old trained on Monday and Tuesday and Emery said Villa will make a call on his availability on the day of Wednesday night’s final against Freiburg in Istanbul.

“He trained yesterday and he is going to train today,” Emery said in Tuesday’s press conference from the Tupras Stadium.

“We will decide it tomorrow if he is feeling 100 per cent well. He is an important player for us.

“But the last matches without him, without (Boubacar) Kamara and with the different options we played I am confident.”

Emery is bidding for a fifth Europa League crown after three successes with Sevilla and one with Villarreal.

The Spaniard insisted he is “not the king of this competition” and Villa can only enjoy success against SC Freiburg - and clinch the club’s first European crown since 1982 - by focusing on the task at home.

“Each match in different competitions you must try to build your mentality,” Emery said.

“Not now for tomorrow, we must build it during the process, in the first match we played in Newcastle at home or the Carabao Cup against Brentford that we lost.

“Football is very difficult to win and to win trophies is more difficult. Being realistic I am of course happy with everything we are doing but I know tomorrow is going to be very difficult.

“If you are not respecting the opponent we will be closer to losing, (the same) if we are not respecting the Europa League.

“This is the strong mentality we’ve had before and we must show the same mentality tomorrow and not think about the next match, think about your task in the first, second or third minute. To win a title is a consequence of that process.”

He added: “I am not the king of this competition. I am here now with Aston Villa and everything I’ve done is gone. With it I am not going to win tomorrow - to win tomorrow I need the players we have at Aston Villa now with the opponents we face tomorrow. It is a new era.

“I don’t want to speak about the thing I did before, this is the reason I am trying to answer about how we are doing it with Aston Villa. The most important thing is our experiences here and how we manage this moment.”