Malaga finished 8th in last season’s La Liga, which isn’t a bad achievement considering it was their first season back after a two year spell in the Segunda División. Coincidentally, their stadium, La Rosaleda, has the 8th largest capacity in the Spanish top flight. Not important, but a little factoid for you all the same.

Nestled in the heart of the Costa Del Sol, Malaga enjoy the support of the local ex-pat community, so maybe Villa’s visit will split the loyalties of a few locals. Hopefully it will also ensure a decent turn out at the 29,000 capacity stadium.

I watched a little bit of Spanish football last season, but not enough to claim to know anything about Malaga. I think it’s safe to assume that a team that even briefly flirts with 5th place two thirds into the season are not mugs. If you consider that the top three (Barcelona, Real, Sevilla) were locked from week 18 onwards, that only leaves Atlético, Villarreal, Valencia & Deportivo between them – all decent sides.

So it’s clear they’re a team that we can’t expect to walk over. They’re also used to the climate and are the home team of course. However, as the La Liga season doesn’t kick off until August 29th, this will be Malaga’s first game of the pre-season. Interestingly, their first game after the Peace Cup will be at Goodison Park against Everton.

Villa can call on the services of Carew, Heskey, Ashley Young, Luke Young, Guzan & Petrov for the first time this summer and with Harewood playing the lone striker for a while in Colchester it’s not a moment too soon. 9 of the 26 man squad are from the reserves and some of them are at the stage of their careers where they ought to be forcing themselves into the manager’s first team thoughts.

I’m not sure if the managers are able to select the entire squad for each game, but their substitutions are limited to 5 outfield plus a goalkeeper. MON’s team selection and substitutions will be very interesting and may well reveal how he really sees his personnel right now.

It would be an act of futility attempting to anticipate MON’s thoughts, but with Malaga being ring rusty themselves, he may well feel like throwing his more senior players in from the start. I wouldn’t put any money on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see something along these lines for a good portion of the game:-

But I’d prefer to see us shaping up something like this:-

But what do I know??

I’ll be updating the major action on Twitter, feel free to get involved.  Kick off is at 2130 GMT.