The Aston Villa manager now has two of his best goalkeepers on the treatment table.
Aston Villa boss Dean Smith has admitted that he’s ‘gutted’ about Jed Steer’s injury in Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at Wolverhampton Wanderers, but claims that it doesn’t excuse the result.
Smith was already without summer signing Tom Heaton due to an unspecified issue which caused him to pull out of Gareth Southgate’s England squad.
As a result, Steer started Aston Villa’s defeat at Molineux yesterday but came off after seven minutes, replaced by Orjan Nyland in goal.
The Villa boss then lost Matt Targett on the stroke of half time to make matters worse, minutes after Wolves went ahead through Ruben Neves.
“I’ve got no excuses about injuries. They caused disruption in the first half with Jed coming off, which I’m gutted about,” Smith told the club’s official website.
“We had to make two changes in the first 45 minutes and obviously that’s not ideal, but we weren’t good enough in the first half and they got reminded of that.”
Aston Villa are right now down to the bare bones in regards to goalkeeping options. It remains to be seen how long Heaton and Steer are sidelined for, meaning that Nyland is now the man with the gloves.
The good news for Smith is that there’s now a two-week international break which could be a blessing for his first two keepers in terms of recuperation but, if not, then the dusty and rusty Nyland – who has only played Under-23 football this season prior to now – could be called into action more and more.
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