Unai Emery confirms significant Aston Villa injury blow, player to miss West Ham and Arsenal clashes

Villa kicked off the new year with a 2-1 victory against Leicester but the three points came at a cost as McGinn was forced off through injury.

The skipper managed just 19 minutes of the game as he went down with pain at the rear of his thigh and had to be replaced by Jacob Ramsey. The injury comes as a real blow as McGinn, a key cog in Emery’s system, has only missed two Premier League matches so far this season.

Emery confirmed in the post-match press conference that McGinn had suffered an injury and will miss several matches as a result. “It could be his hamstring, I don’t know exactly but it could be two, three, four or five weeks,” the head coach said.

McGinn will undergo a scan in the next couple of days to conclusively determine extent of his injury. If his return comes at the bottom end of the scale - two weeks - then he would miss the FA Cup clash with West Ham United and the Premier League trip to Everton.

If it’s at the five-week mark, the Scotsman would also be absent for the games against Arsenal, AS Monaco, Celtic and Wolverhampton Wanderers - as well as the other clash with West Ham, in the Premier League rather than the FA Cup.

The likeliest replacements for McGinn, in the left midfield role, are Morgan Rogers and Jacob Ramsey. The players filling in if McGinn was in the number 10 role would be similar, too, with Rogers and Ramsey among Villa’s most versatile midfielders.

Even with quality players to come in for the skipper, it’s certainly not an ideal situation as Emery needs as many bodies as possible for the upcoming streak of seven matches in the next four weeks – averaging out at one outing every four days.

Hamstring injuries becoming all too regular for Aston Villa

McGinn’s new ailment isn’t the first hamstring-related injury Villa have had to deal with this season, in fact it’s not even the first for McGinn himself. Ramsey, Matty Cash, Boubacar Kamara, Leon Bailey and Emiliano Martinez have all suffered hamstring pulls or strains this term, making for a rather worrying trend.

It’s difficult to determine why the pattern exists. Perhaps it’s a matter of over-exertion or fatigue with so many games in quick succession. Or it could just be down to bad luck. Villa aren’t the only club to suffer, at least.