Seaman and Keown are still out, and while Ashley Cole is back playing (and scoring) for the reserves his return to first team action is widely expected not to come before next weekend's FA Cup semi-final.

Having said that, the fact that Gio van Bronckhorst picked up an ankle injury on international duty does raise the possibility that Cole's return will be accelerated. The alternative is Kolo Toure who, to be fair, put in a fair performance at left back in the FA Cup replay against Chelsea. Regarding both Cole and Oleg Luzhny (who has also returned to action for the resreves int he last couple of weeks), Wenger says that he hasn't decided on them for Villa yet, but "they both look a little short". This comes from the injury news page at Arsenal.com, which also says that Rami Shaaban has started light training following his fracture of both lower leg bones.

Robert Pires missed both of France's wins in the last week through injury, and his ankle problem is expected to keep him out of the side at Villa Park. In fact it's a lot worse than first thought, and he could be missing the FA Cup semi-final too. But Vieira and Campbell both recovered in time to play in the midweek matches so they should be ok.

Jerome Aliadiere has been ruled out for the rest of the season. It's been decided that he should have an operation on a hernia next week.

Villa have midfielder Joey Gudjonsson returning from both injury and a ban, but Dion Dublin is suspended, the second of a 3 game ban for the head-butt on Robbie Savage (small price to pay, you might think).

Darius Vassell will be hoping to re-create his England form for Villa, he was a breath of fresh air when he came on for Michael Owen on Wednesday. Whether Alpay gets a chance to re-create his Turkey form remains to be seen. He seems to have fallen out dramatically with Graham Taylor. The defender has been claiming that Taylor has been leaving him out of the Villa side as a favour to England, claims that Taylor strenuously denies. There must surely be something to it besides his playing though, Alpay is a pretty good player.