Aston Villa defender Pau Torres will be available for their Champions League last 16 first leg tie against Club Brugge after recovering from a foot fracture, manager Unai Emery said ahead of Tuesday’s game in Belgium.
The 28-year-old Torres suffered a metatarsal fracture during a Premier League 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in late December.
Fellow defenders Tyrone Mings and Matty Cash are also fit after missing Villa’s 2-0 FA Cup win over Cardiff on Friday, alongside midfielder Boubacar Kamara, who picked up a thigh injury last month.
“Torres, Mings and Matty Cash are in the squad,” Emery told reporters on Monday, adding that recent signings Andres Garcia and Donyell Malen have not been registered for the competition.
“Kamara was in the squad Friday and for tomorrow he could start playing minutes.”
Emery said that after losing to Brugge in their first-round meeting earlier this season, he expected his team to put in a much better performance this time around.
“We played here in November and we’re now in March. Hopefully we can do better now,” he said.
“When we played here we weren’t competing like I want to do. The players know and we analysed why we didn’t compete in that moment like we can hopefully do tomorrow.
“The next step is tomorrow, trying to do our best being motivated, being excited, getting balance emotionally and playing good football.”
The Spaniard expects January loan signings Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio, who have been instrumental in Villa’s recent victories, to make an impact in Europe’s elite club competition.
“We added players with experience in Europe and in this competition. Usually, they are players playing in the highest level who can help us a lot,” Emery said.
“The process they are doing, progressively adapting to us, is going well… We are not going to get our objective only through individual players. We are going to get it collectively, building our structure as strong as possible.
“Once we have our structure, individual players can exploit their skills. This is the challenge we have.”
