In Video: Ange Postecoglou confirms Dejan Kulusevski will miss the Europa League final

Injury Woes Continue to Plague Aston Villa

Yeah, look, obviously, um, disappointing news. Uh, you know, initially we thought it wasn’t too serious because the medical team was worried about the structurally how the knee was, but it seemed pretty good, but kind of blew up the day after and we kind of knew there was an issue there. So, he’s had surgery and, uh, it put him out for, uh, at least, uh, a few months.

Lucas Bergwell’s Recovery Update

Can I ask you about Lucas Bergwell because we thought he was out for the rest of the season, but there’s some suggestion floating around that he might have made like an incredibly fast recovery and might be available in a few weeks. It’s still the same sort of time frame. He’s literally just got out of the boot and um yeah, just sort of taking his first tentative steps on the grass, but unlikely to be available.

Morale and Planning Ahead

With all of these spate of injuries, I mean, how has that affected the morale of the team? Because it seems like whenever you’ve done really well in the Europa League, you lose a key player and what has it done for yourself in terms of being able to plan ahead to the next game? Look, I guess because it’s been a constant with us during the year, we’ve kind of become almost accustomed to it. And I think it would probably be a bigger issue if sort of we’ve had a had a smooth run all year and sort of got hit with injuries now and we kind of had to deal with missing key players.

Selection Dilemmas

We’ll put out a team that hopefully gets the job done tomorrow. I’m not sure about the integrity. I think there have been times this year when we’ve had to field weakened teams because of injury. Does that affect integrity? So, I’ll be very surprised if people are questioning our integrity to try and win a game of football tomorrow.

Putting Out a Strong Team

Yeah, I think as I said, I mean it’s look, we understand the sort of the challenging situation we’re in and particularly the players because um you know when you’re making sort of seven or eight changes in a in a team lineup um you know sort of throwing players together it’s it is very difficult for them but even within that context I still felt we could have performed better on the day um collectively and individually and that’s a challenge for the players you know to try and seize the opportunity that’s before them.

Josh Key and Jamie Donnelly Reflect

I just wondered what you made of Josh Key and Jamie Donnelly and how they’ve done getting through to the playoff final. Yeah, I watched your game last night. It was a cracking game and um yeah, super pleased for both of them. I think both of those guys have, but it’s even better if they’re sort of part of something that um you know could be um special for them in terms of success.

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