Aston Villa FC

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Villa expect Carson return

26 Mar 2008 - 12:45:09

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Aston Villa are confident that Scott Carson will have recovered from a knee injury in time to face Manchester United on Saturday.

Carson was forced to withdraw from the England squad for the friendly international against France but the injury does not appear to be of any great concern.

A spokesman told Villa's official website: "We didn't think it was anything serious but, after consultation between our own medical team and England's, it was decided a week away with the international squad may have aggravated the problem."

Meanwhile, Martin Laursen has called on his team-mates to rise to the challenge and put together a good run of form in the last few weeks of the season.

Villa have taken only two points from their last four league matches and have suffered successive defeats to Portsmouth and Sunderland to slip to seventh in the table.

Laursen is demanding more consistency, saying: "We have to deal with the pressure if we want to be a big team and if we want to go for European places. There are expectations, but it is only normal.

"If you want to be a big team then you have to win games against perhaps the smaller teams. It should not be a problem, as I see it.

"We can't just play as the underdogs all the time and play on the counter-attack. We need to be able to control the game and we need to be able to go into a game at home against a team on paper, and in the table, not as good as us and win.

"If we can't do that then we are not a big team and we can't go for anything. We need to be able to control that and to do that."