Aston Villa’s home game with Everton has been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak in the Villa camp.
The game was due to take place at Villa Park on Sunday but will not go ahead as a “significant” number of players and staff are currently isolating.
The club were forced into closing their training ground last week as a result of the outbreak and their midweek game with Spurs was postponed as Villa could not meet the minimum requirement of fourteen fit senior players being in their squad for the trip to London.
Sunday’s postponement is the third Premier League game involving Dean Smith’s side to be called off due to a Covid outbreak. Their game against Newcastle at the beginning of December was postponed as a result of an outbreak in the Newcastle squad. Villa’s home ties due to take place this week with Jose Mourinho’s Spurs and Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton have been postponed because of the number of positive cases that Villa have suffered.
Villa did play last Friday’s FA Cup third-round fixture with Liverpool. They fielded a team consisting of U18 and U23 players in their 1-4 defeat at home to the Premier league champions.
‘The Villains’ game with Newcastle has been rearranged for Saturday 23 January at 8pm. No other fixtures have a date set as of yet.
Villa now have a considerable backlog of games that they have to make up. They have only played fifteen Premier league games so far, compared to other clubs who have completed eighteen of their thirty-eight fixtures.
