Aston Villa host Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday afternoon in a fixture that will hugely impact the race for the top four.
Unai Emery’s men are five points ahead of Spurs, having played one more game.
Ahead of the game, Villa are sweating on the fitness of midfielder Jacob Ramsey, who missed the 0-0 draw with Ajax on Thursday evening.
Tottenham also have their injury issues. Ange Postecoglou is without four first-team players, although he has welcomed back Pedro Porro, who is available for Sunday’s huge clash.
Of course, the main narrative will focus on the significance of the Champions League race, yet there is some prior history between the two sides.
During Villa’s eventful 2-1 win earlier in the season, Matty Cash was involved in an incident with Rodrigo Bentancur, which left the Uruguayan sidelined.
Now Ange Posetcoglou has been questioned on the incident ahead of Sunday’s clash.
Aston Villa: Ange Postecoglou on Matty Cash incident
In his pre-match press conference, Postecoglou insisted he had no interest in the tackle on the £20million Tottenham signing.
“I wouldn’t place sole ownership on the fans, it seems like you’re fuelling that a bit yourselves! No interest, mate,” he told Football London.
“For us, the challenge is to face a really good team with really strong home form and beyond that you’d be surprised about how little that stuff infiltrates what we do and sort of our motivations for a game of football.”
He added: “If anything, they’re the type of things where you hope that as you mature and develop as a team, become less and less important or a focus.
“When you’re clutching at those kinds of things, you’re losing sense of what’s important. What’s important for us is to be at our best against a very good football team and try to get a result.”
It feels like the media is trying to spin this narrative. The reality is that neither set of players will care about what has happened before.
Their focus will be purely on executing their manager’s gameplans to the letter in what is shaping up to be one of the fixtures of the season.
Two sides who like to attack going head to head in a significant Premier League clash; there’s a lot to get excited about.
