Aston Villa’s Jonathan Kodjia fractured his cheekbone in a training-ground wreck with a team-mate and will probably be out for”two or three weeks”, says Dean Smith.
The Ivory Coast international and Marvelous Nakamba fought during training, and additional scans revealed the real extent of the damage, though originally there were no worries .
“The only one who’s now injured is Jonathan Kodjia, he’s fractured a cheekbone at a training-ground accident,” Smith said at Friday’s press conference. “He simply awakened heads with Marvelous Nakamba at a non-competitive portion of instruction.
“We thought it was fine but they’ve picked up a fracture in the hospital so he’s had an operation on this now and will be out for another two or three weeks.”
Smith said Villa will consider a facial mask for Kodjia:”He will return non-contact and we’ll have to see how it goes. I think we’ve seen a good deal of these injuries where the masks are worn; we’ll certainly be looking at that longer down the line.”
Villa take on West Ham on Monday Night Football, and Smith has called to Give a Lot of air for the visit of the side of Manuel Pellegrini.
“The last match at Villa Park it was totally satisfying,” said Smith. “I said following the Bournemouth game which was our best operation and we ended up never getting anything out of the match when we probably deserved to.
“Everton was a more demanding game but we managed to find that win and we all had the place rocking so we need to do this again under the floodlights on Monday.”
Smith is expecting West Ham in particular new signing Sebastien Haller – to issue Aston Villa in attack – but states that the Hammers will’ve been working hard on their defence after devoting seven goals in their first four Premier League games.
“They’re certainly a risk going forward,” stated the 48-year-old. “I watched their game against Watford the other day and it was end to end – it might happen to be 5-5.
“If you examine the expected-goals table they will be in the top for entertainment. I think that they can score a good deal but concede a good deal as well – I am guessing I understand what they will have been working on during the global period.
“In registering Haller up front he seems a great centre forward. They paid a lot of money for him but he’s got a couple of good intentions already and seems a handful.”
Haller, that West Ham bought for # 45m from Frankfurt, has been compared to.
“Financially there is a whole great deal of money between the two of them,” explained Smith. “They are both best players that need to be playing in the Premier League.
“There’s going to be folks who will put comparisons but we’ve told Wes just focus on his own game. Go and get and Focus on what he is doing another performance like he did against Everton.
“They’ve got a great deal of similarities. He scored them as well as produced a great deal of goals As soon as I watched plenty of Wes. That was a big part of the game that I brought me and enjoyed. I believe that’s probably among the biggest gaps ”
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