EU WHAT?
Aston Villa leave £22million signing out of Champions League squad after he said it was ‘big’ reason behind transfer
Emery reveals the high-fliers made more transfer window changes than he wanted
UNAI EMERY revealed he had to break the bad news to new signings Donyell Malen and Andres Garcia that they were OUT of his Champions League squad.
Even though that was one of the main reasons Malen joined Aston Villa from Borussia Dortmund.
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UEFA rules stipulate that Villa could only add three new players to the squad they named for the league phase, despite releasing SIX players during the transfer window.
Villa signed five players in the winter window, including Malen for £20million and Garcia for £6m.
However Villa then swooped for Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi in the final days of the market.
Emery explained: "The rules are that we can only register three changes.
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"We did more changes in the transfer window than we wanted.
"We lost one more player in the list because Jaden Philogene was a club-trained player.
"We lost the opportunity through him to have one more player in the squad.
"So we changed five players and we can only register three.
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"We had to make a decision yesterday and the ones that are out are Andres Garcia and Donyell Malen.
"It was not a good decision I had to take yesterday but I spoke with Andres and Donyell to tell them the decision and argued my decision with them."
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Malen, who played for Borussia Dortmund in last year's final, was understandably gutted by the shock news.
When he joined Villa in January, he made it clear: "The Champions League is a big thing for me - it's the biggest competition in the world.
"I've played in it for the last few years, so for me it was very important that Villa were in the competition. It is where you want to play."
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