Aston Villa will be without three key players for Liverpool match

Paul Lambert will have, by recent standards, a surprisingly large number of players to choose from for Saturday's match against Liverpool. Fabian Delph is returning from his red-card suspension, Nathan Baker is back and healthy, and Carles Gil is apparently set to slot into the matchday squad immediately. That's good news!

The bad news is that we've probably got two of those players used already thanks to various issues. Baker is likely to take the now-suspended Ciaran Clark's spot after the defender got a red card in the Leicester City match. I say "likely" because it's Nathan Baker and one never knows what will happen to the poor guy. And someone will have to take the starting spot left open by Joe Cole, who (surprise) hurt his hamstring in the Leicester match. In that outing, Cole surpassed all expectations by playing for 72 minutes, but if past history is any indicator, I think we'll be without him for about a month now. There is, too, the long-term injury to Ron Vlaar. He's still not expected back until some time in February.

We've also got the injuries to Philippe Senderos and Libor Kozak, but we knew those were on the table. Luckily, with the newly ready players, the only worry we have is in central defense where, for at least this weekend, there is little to no depth. Nobody get hurt, please.