Villa get mixed bag of injury news ahead of trip to Manchester City

It's not often that Aston Villa get a net positive in injury news, but this seems to be our lucky week. Of course, how you quantify "lucky" is up to you, given that Tim Sherwood has confirmed that Ciaran Clark is out for the season and Nathan Baker will definitely be missing at least this weekend's match against Manchester City. But while that's two players down, and Villa may be getting as many as three back.

In his weekly press conference, Sherwood has said that Aly Cissokho, Philippe Senderos, and possibly even Gabby Agbonlahor will be fit for the weekend according to the team's official twitter feed. If Gabby is actually fit, he should be expected to assume his standard spot up front next to Christian Benteke, and the return of Aly Cissokho should spare us another week of Kieran Richardson: Quixotic Left Back. Senderos likely won't figure in the starting XI, but he will be much-needed cover for a centre-back core that has only two other players (Ron Vlaar and Jores Okore) healthy.

Finally, on non-injury fronts, Villa will see the return to eligibility of Carlos Sánchez after he served his one-match red card suspension. And Jack Grealish, who was photographed inhaling what many assume to be nitrous oxide, will be available after Sherwood spoke to him:

#avfc Tim Sherwood has spoken to Jack Grealish. It won't happen again. The pic is a year old. End of the matter. In squad for Sat at MCFC@

— BBC WM Sport 95.6 (@sportbbcwm) April 23, 2015

The losses of Baker and Clark are undeniably big, but it's hard to see this week's injury report and think that Villa have come out looking too badly. Maybe that's just the fact that we've grown accustomed to terrible news, but I'll take it.