Unai Emery - our manager

[Bad English]

This thread makes my brain die at times.......beam me to Dublin

All day I hear the noise of posters
Making moan.

[Astnor]

People can think or believe what they like but its well known that a smaller group classes are better at learning as theres more scope and far less disruption and distraction.
Emery is breeding students of the game. It's no coincidence that he's signed Spainish speaking players and linked to players he's previously worked  with.

Thanks

[Brazilian Villain]

This thread makes my brain die at times.......beam me to Dublin

I'll meet up with you for a few pints if you do make it over.

[dave shelley]

This thread makes my brain die at times.......beam me to Dublin

I'll meet up with you for a few pints if you do make it over.

Best not to tell him Diageo are sticking 50 cents on the price of a pint of Guinness from tomorrow then.

[Brazilian Villain]

This thread makes my brain die at times.......beam me to Dublin

I'll meet up with you for a few pints if you do make it over.

Best not to tell him Diageo are sticking 50 cents on the price of a pint of Guinness from tomorrow then.

It's news to me too, thought it was only 12 cents but looks like it could be up to 50 cents in the pubs.

[wince]

This thread makes my brain die at times.......beam me to Dublin

All day I hear the noise of posters
Making moan.

It’s a certain poster whose posts are more like making stool.

[Footy-Vill]

February 2023 to season end objectives
Emery has said to remain in the Premier League and go on by finishing in the top 10.
So it appears a reasonable target for the rest of this season is to place in the top half.
Emery first stressed the importance of our premier league safety at the press conference for Leicester City. He discusses the team's objective and next step but also reminds us to keep in mind where we came from and that other teams at the bottom are putting a lot of effort into maintaining their Premier League status.

"Our first target is to keep in the Premier league..We are not yet in the top 10 as its very difficult"

Emery mentioned how important it is now to get into the top half.
And says it's crucial against Leicester because it's the first time we've had a chance to finish in the top 10.
We have 18 matches left to reach our goal.

Tomorrow, the team must improve on their home performances against Wolves and Leeds, as well as demonstrate consistency over 90 minutes at the level Emery desires.

He stated that he will be demanding of himself and the players.

[SaddVillan]

From The Athletic.

It was early on in Unai Emery’s first week at Aston Villa when the new head coach began to reaffirm what those in positions of power at the club already knew.

Emery had the players gripped on the training pitch as he worked through methods he felt would make Villa more defensively secure but also more threatening in attack.

Even then, so soon after the Spaniard’s appointment, it was clear these elite new standards would ease fears of the team getting dragged into a relegation battle following their woeful form towards the end of the Steven Gerrard era.

Villa’s ambitious co-owner Nassef Sawiris played a contributing role in convincing Emery to take the job and promised to continue providing funds to modernise the club’s infrastructure and strengthen both the first-team squad and pool of emerging academy talent. He was excited from the start.

Chief executive Christian Purslow and sporting director Johan Lange also knew Emery’s work would make a difference.

Purslow and Lange have put in considerable time to help create an impressive structure at the club. Both watched Emery, a four-time Europa League-winning manager, closely during those first few days of training in November and felt relaxed as he started to add what had been the missing touch; a coaching blueprint for success.

With Sawiris, co-owner Wes Edens (NSWE) and Purslow committed to long-term projects including further strengthening of the squad, a rebuild of Villa Park’s North Stand and modernisation of the surrounding areas, it feels like things are coming together at the West Midlands club.

Villa already have a new inner-city academy, designed to attract the best talent in Birmingham and the wider region to the club at an early age, on the way later this year.

The facilities at their Bodymoor Heath base are state-of-the-art — its under-21s section had a new hub built recently and the first-team work out of a stylish performance centre inspired by Edens and designed by performance director Jeremy Oliver during the pandemic.

Villa, who were saved from bankruptcy when NSWE completed a takeover in 2018, are unrecognisable now compared to those crisis days down in the Championship.

They have a modern sporting director in Lange who arrived in the summer of 2020 with the brief of creating a team to compete for the club’s first Premier League top-10 finish in a decade. He has helped build a squad now worth more than it cost to assemble.

Besides recruiting footballers, Lange has hired good people, too.

There’s Rob Mackenzie, who had a hand in putting together a Premier League-winning squad at Leicester City, as head of recruitment, and Alex Fraser, the chief scout, signed from Brighton & Hove Albion. Frederik Leth joined as head of research in January 2021 and was tasked with implementing a data culture across all departments. Arjav Trivedi moved from StatDNA at Arsenal to be Villa’s lead data scientist soon after.

All four helped play a big part in the process of choosing Boubacar Kamara last summer and recent signing Jhon Duran as well as modernising the way Villa recruit.

Adam Henshall, who runs the emerging talent and loans department, is another important figure, while Mark Harrison manages an academy that is now producing multi-million-pound players including brothers Jacob and Aaron Ramsey, Cameron Archer, Tim Iroegbunam, Jaden Philogene-Bidace, Keinan Davis and Carney Chukwuemeka, who was sold to Chelsea for £20million last summer at age 18.

Credit must also go to those who previously worked in the academy, as a stack of Villa’s most talented youngsters have been at the club since a very early age.

It has needed an elite-level first-team head coach and his experienced backroom team to pull a talented squad of under-performers together, though.

After that debut win over Manchester United on November 6 — Villa are the only team other than Premier League leaders Arsenal to beat Erik ten Hag’s side in 24 games across all competitions over the past four months — it was clear the players began believing in Emery too.

Before his arrival, many of the first team had picked the brains of goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez and centre-back Calum Chambers to find out what Emery’s management style was like when he was their boss at Arsenal for 18 months from the summer of 2018.

The in-form Tyrone Mings was particularly inquisitive. Encouraged by the way so many of Villarreal’s players had taken to Emery in his previous role, the England centre-back was excited to see if the same could be repeated at Villa.

Picking up 16 points from the seven Premier League games under his guidance so far has helped answer some of the early questions — only Arsenal have picked up more among the top flight’s 20 clubs over their last seven matches.

The players also know what to expect in the build-up to games; long video sessions, precise tactical breakdowns, a forensic approach to cutting out the opposition and repetitive shape work.

Emery remains as intense now as he was on his first day in November. The man is a workaholic who arrives early at Bodymoor Heath and leaves late as he’s constantly striving to improve performance.

When his 51st birthday fell just three days into his time at Villa, family members and close friends knew not to ask him twice about celebrating on the day. Instead, he earmarked a period to mark the occasion after that first fixture against United three days later — and then only if Villa won the game.

Yet even with family members over from Spain, Emery’s main focus in the aftermath of that first victory remained on setting up a varied training plan ahead of the trip to Brighton a week later, where Villa also ran out winners.

Players young and old are impressed by the level of detail that goes into the pre-match plans, where every week is different.

Emery is obsessed with tactics, and as Villa forward Leon Bailey said recently: “He’s one of those coaches who knows what he wants from his players and he takes time to make sure that every single player, including the players on the bench, know exactly what they need to do on the pitch.”

Striker Ollie Watkins has explained some of the finer details, which includes telling players where to stand and how to position their bodies when receiving the ball.

January signing Alex Moreno, having seen his previous club Real Betis struggle against Emery’s Villarreal in La Liga, including losing both matches last season 2-0, was also keen to find out the manager’s secrets in creating an unpredictable edge.

The 29-year-old left-back feels he is now working for one of the most focused coaches in his career and shares Emery’s desire to bring European football back to Villa Park.

Emery hasn’t ripped up the rulebook around discipline at Villa, but he is starting to change the way they prepare for games.

More time is spent in hotels before matches and he uses the quiet times between rest and recuperation periods to hold long, in-depth meetings and pores over hours of video footage personally seeking an edge on opponents.

While typically he is an encouraging voice, there have been times when he has had to dig out individuals for not sticking to their given task. Each player has specific instructions they must follow in a game, and it requires a high level of focus.

Leaning on his elite support team has also helped.

Alongside Emery is his long-term right-hand man, Pablo Villanueva, who works as the first-team coach. Pako Ayestaran, who was an assistant to then-Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez and has held managerial positions of his own, is an experienced No 2. Emery has a personal assistant, Damia Vidagany, by his side too. It’s a position he wanted to create to give him the best chance of succeeding after a miserable end to his first experience in England as Arsene Wenger’s successor at Arsenal.

Perhaps the biggest difference from recent Villa managers is that he can spot crucial in-game changes that make a genuine difference.

Villa have taken the lead in four of his seven league games, and gone on to win all four. They also came from behind to win at Brighton and to draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Emery is not afraid to pack the defence when required but open up slightly in search of the win. His experience managing Lorca, Almeria, Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal and Villarreal since injury forced him to retire as a player in 2004 has lifted him into the elite coaching bracket.

There’s no doubt, though, that his demanding workload requires total buy-in. Such detailed training sessions can feel laborious if good results do not follow.

But the Villa players have bought into the new way of working and are reaping the rewards that follow.

Ezri Konsa is back to his best, Douglas Luiz is thriving alongside Kamara in midfield, Emiliano Buendia has finally moved ahead of Philippe Coutinho in the pecking order and Watkins and Bailey have both chipped in with important goals.

Away games are enjoyable for supporters again, with Villa having won the last three in a row, and the atmosphere during home matches — criticised heavily for being either ‘too quiet’ or ‘toxic’ — is picking up too.

It hasn’t been favourable for every player the new regime inherited.

Danny Ings was sold to West Ham United last month for an initial £12million as Emery didn’t see a long-term future for him; Matty Cash faces a challenge to win back his place in the team; Lucas Digne, currently out injured, is now behind Moreno despite arriving for £23million only 12 months ago, and Leander Dendoncker, a summer signing from Wolves, is struggling for minutes.

Bowing out of both cup competitions was a blow.

Villa lost 4-2 at Manchester United in the Carabao Cup just four days after that November league win and then suffered the bruising setback of losing at home to fourth-division Stevenage in the FA Cup — ironically on the 10th anniversary of their miserable 3-1 defeat away to fourth-division Bradford City in the first leg of a League Cup semi-final.

With those exits perhaps went Emery’s best chance of qualifying Villa for Europe next season — the feat which remains the ultimate judging point of success or failure for any manager of this club so desperately waiting for lift-off.

The alternative route into Europe is finishing in the top seven.

With Newcastle United flying high and looking capable of sustaining their own push for a return to European football, that would mean outperforming either Liverpool, Chelsea or Tottenham over a 38-game season, and Villa haven’t managed that since the 2009-10 season.

Villa are positioned nicely in 11th though, a point behind both Liverpool and Chelsea, and what’s encouraging is the continued level of support from the owners.

NSWE are as engaged and ambitious as on the day they took over. During the recent break for the playing of a winter World Cup, they asked for live video streams of each friendly game Villa played to keep on top of the team’s progress and Sawiris, the more hands-on of the two, attends regularly in person.

It was Sawiris, through his connection with the agent Jorge Mendes, that put the deal together to bring in Emery.

During the ensuing discussions, Emery was told he would have a degree of freedom to identify future transfer targets and despite a quiet winter window where Moreno (an Emery signing) and Duran (a club signing) were the only arrivals, the noise as attention turns to the summer suggests several big deals are on the horizon.

Top of the wish list is a high-level striker — someone with a proven track record. Emery also wants a winger and to increase the competition in midfield.

Currently light on numbers in the forward department, the squad is ready for that rebuild and the funds will be made available, even Villa’s spending has decreased over the last three summers, with their net outlay of around £120million now looking fairly modest compared to some of their top-flight rivals.

What’s certain is the players identified as potential signings in the months ahead — and many are likely to be targets who’ve already been considered — will be seen as significant improvements on what Villa already have.

Although having a greater say on transfers than any other manager under NSWE, Emery is also willing to listen to the advice of those already at the club.

Villa currently have a tight-knit scouting team that works closely with the head coach to meet the specific needs of his style of play. Communication is often in person — Lange’s office is just two metres away from Emery’s — or through a restricted WhatsApp group.

Mackenzie and Fraser have been the two key people who identify targets, depending on the positions which need to be addressed in the short to medium term. The data team then profile relevant players before in-person scouting missions follow. Lange travels to watch possible signings towards the later stages of the scouting process.

Three of the first four signings on Lange’s watch — Martinez, Cash and Watkins — have impressed in claret and blue and gone on to make their senior international debuts as Villa players.

Martinez became a World Cup winner with Argentina in December and while the club’s then-goalkeeping coach, Neil Cutler, pushed hard to bring in the long-time Arsenal reserve ’keeper, Lange also played a part through initial scouting and then regular FaceTime calls to remind the player of Villa’s interest.

Villa’s players have been blown away by the level of detail in presentations put on by the club, and that is one of the reasons why Kamara was so keen to join them last summer.

The data team identified Kamara’s unique profile early on and decided that because he had played so much football for Marseille at an early age, he had a good chance of settling into the No 6 role in the Premier League quicker than others might.

During the early months of last year, Villa started to explain to the Frenchman why he was the player they were so determined to sign. Purslow, Lange and Gerrard went out to watch him play and then towards the end of the season, as his contract was close to expiring, the big push came.

There were multiple late-night meetings, video calls and even a specific presentation to his family. This all helped Kamara make up his mind amid interest from clubs who could offer Champions League football.

A similar process followed with Diego Carlos, a signing Villa remain proud of despite the Achilles tendon injury that has kept him out since the second game of the season back in August, because the Sevilla centre-back also chose them amid rival interest.

When Villa present to players and their representatives, they take time to explain the reasons why they have become specific targets ahead of others.

Villa also came close to landing Arsenal’s Emile Smith Rowe in the summer of 2021, having two bids rejected for the attacking midfielder.

Not every signing has worked out.

Morgan Sanson, on the back of two injuries, is the biggest disappointment and his move, also from Marseille, is recognised as a £14million mistake. Ludwig Augustinsson’s loan move from Sevilla was unsuccessful as he recently cut short his agreement to join Real Mallorca and his fellow Swede Robin Olsen, even as a backup goalkeeper, has been inconsistent since arriving from Roma.

Coutinho’s move has also backfired. The Brazilian was signed specifically for Gerrard, who had played with him during his more productive days at Liverpool, but the early spark has been extinguished. Villa felt it was a deal worth pursuing at the time, especially as he arrived for a cut-price £17million from Barcelona.

What is showing in the results of late, and the developing style of play, is that Villa have a talented squad and that high-level coaching had been missing.

Further additions to the starting XI and behind the scenes are needed, but the structure is in place and, helped by an air of togetherness, this is the greatest opportunity Villa have had for over a decade to close the gap to some of the bigger boys.

Achieving European football may not happen this year but the signs of improvement are real.

Villa finally appear to be on the up and ready to unlock their full potential.

[Brazilian Villain]

From The Athletic.

Cheers for posting the article SV as I had it seen mentioned on Twitter. Aside from Emery (who we all know is great) it seems particularly positive about Lange and also very interesting to read about the detailed presentations made to prospective signings.

[eamonn]

Good article, the type The Athletic do well. Is it by the much-maligned Gregg with too many g's ?

[SaddVillan]

Good article, the type The Athletic do well. Is it by the much-maligned Gregg with too many g's ?

The byline credits Gregg Evans and David Ornstein

[eamonn]

Ornstein was the second fella I thought of.

[Baldy]

Having an 'intelligent football' manager is akin to having an extra player on the pitch!!

Early days, but Unai gives me that extra bit of confidence.

[pauliewalnuts]

Ornstein is basically the Arsenal John Percy in that what he writes is invariably true.

He probably provided input to the article on Emery’s time there.

[Nelly]

Thanks so much for sharing this. Really interesting and encouraging. I sat up when it suggested we were actually close to signing Smith-Rowe. That would have been some statement!