Key events
Aaron Ramsey, who captains Cardiff after recovering from a hamstring injury, has a chat: “It’s a great competition and we’re really looking forward to this challenge. We know how tough it’s going to be. Hopefully it’ll be a memorable night for us. We know how difficult it’ll be but hopefully we’ll have one of those special FA Cup evenings.”
“We want to be as competitive as we can be in this game,” says the Cardiff manager Omer Riza, who has given the 19-year-old defender Dylan Lawlor a full debut. “They’ve put out a strong side so … it should be interesting. Anything can happen in the FA Cup. It’s a one-off situation. If we turn up and we do everything right that we can, you never know. It’s good character building.”
As exclusively revealed in the Guardian earlier this month, semi-automated offside technology is being trialled in this season’s FA Cup from the fifth round onwards. That means this will be the first game in the country to use it.
Team news
The teams are in, and these are the players who will decide this tie, with Emi Martinez declared fit to take his place in a strong Aston Villa side:
Aston Villa: Martinez, Garcia, Konsa, Bogarde, Maatsen, McGinn, Tielemans, Bailey, Asensio, Rashford, Watkins. Subs: Olsen, Digne, Rogers, Ramsey, Kamara, Rowe, Zych, Jimoh.
Cardiff: Horvath, Fish, Goutas, Lawlor, Ng, Ramsey, Colwill, Giles, El Ghazi, Willock, Robinson. Subs: Turner, O’Dowda, Mannsverk, Robertson, Salech, Bagan, Davies, Ashford, Nyakuhwa.
Referee: Peter Bankes.
Hello world!
“We are not a contender in the FA Cup to win the title,” said Villa boss Unai Emery ahead of this game. “We are not contenders. Why? Because there are other teams with more options than us to win this competition.”
Oh.
Ahead of this fifth-round tie it’s hard to read those comments and not just think, oh well sod it then, I’ll just read my book. But wait until you hear what Omer Riza had to say about his Cardiff side, enjoying a brief breather from the battle for Championship survival (they’re 19th, six points and quite a lot of goal difference above the bottom three):
“I’d like to put my strongest team out so you can have a real go at it – and if we were 12th in the league I’d have no issues with that,” Riza said. “But we have just got too many far more important games coming up, which are about surviving and staying in the Championship. Sometimes I think it [would have been] best that we went out in the third round. We’re definitely not rolling over and saying ‘take the game’, but it’s frustrating we can’t be at full-strength and have a real go at it.”
So what we have here is a game between a team that doesn’t want to be in the competition and another that thinks they might as well not be in it. And if that doesn’t get your juices flowing at the end of a long week I don’t know what will.
For what it’s worth I think Emery is wrong: the two best teams in the country (according to the league table) are already out of the Cup, Chelsea likewise, and the teams in sixth and eighth are playing each other on Sunday. Sure, Manchester City are still involved, have a helpful draw and look a bit ominous, but Villa look like very feasible cup-winners to me.
There are some injury issues right now, though. “Matty Cash, close, but we will see,” Emery said. “Pau [Torres] not, Tyrone Mings doubt, Emiliano Martinez doubt, Barkley not, Onana doubt, Kamara doubt, they are close to a come back but we will see. Malen is sick, hopefully he can recover. Being sick is different.” Their line-up tonight could be fearsome, or it could be a bit feeble.
None of this is very promising, I can’t lie. But stay with me! It’s a funny old game, and maybe this will turn out to be a good one.