Villa boss Gerrard rules Digne out of Arsenal clash

Steven Gerrard has said Lucas Digne will miss Aston Villa's Premier League match against Arsenal on Saturday but will still join up with France next week.

Digne was forced off 10 minutes into last weekend's 2-1 defeat away to West Ham with a hamstring problem, but was included in the France squad for friendlies against Ivory Coast and South Africa.

"Lucas Digne will miss the game tomorrow as he's nursing a hamstring issue," Gerrard said. "We don't think it's too big and he won't be out for too long.

"He'll join up and be assessed by France after being called up. I think he's a big doubt certainly for the first game and probably has an outside chance of the second game, but obviously he misses tomorrow's game."

Both Villa and Arsenal go into the Saturday lunchtime fixture after seeing recent momentum halted by defeat - Arsenal's run of five straight wins was ended by Liverpool on Wednesday night while Villa had won three on the bounce before last week's setback at the London Stadium.

"Every game is different," Gerrard said.

"Against West Ham I think we had to be better in the final third. I think a lot of our play in build up, creating in the middle of the pitch, we did a lot of positive things, and our reaction to going a couple of goals down was very good.

"The big takeaway was we can't give the ball away in silly areas and we need to defend our box better.

"Arsenal have been in great form since September. Mikel (Arteta) has done a fantastic job and really found that consistency that Arsenal have been looking for so credit to him for that.

"He's come through a couple of periods where the pressure was on him and his team and you've got to give people at Arsenal credit for backing him and giving him the time to really stamp his