From The Athletic
BRILLIANT EMERY DESERVES ENORMOUS CREDIT FOR TURNING ASTON VILLA’S SEASON AROUND
By Hacob Tanswell
When the tide turns against a coach, the end is often in sight.
Arne Slot is going through a difficult period at Liverpool, just like many before him in the sport who have ultimately been dismissed.
For any successful coach like Slot, the challenge often resembles that difficult second album; repeating early success comes against the backdrop of increasingly harder challenges, with more pressure to deliver and rivals knowing how you operate.
Maintaining player buy-in while addressing tactical issues and subsequently evolving is more taxing when the initial freshness of a manager’s arrival dissipates and some weariness sets in.
Flickers of doubt can be detectable, keenly felt for coaches who have a distinctive, undeviating playing style. They can start well — perhaps due to shock factor — before opposing sides have enough evidence to begin plotting how to counteract them. They then start to hit a wall, with players and tactical schemes nullified.
The key ingredient of squad buy-in vanishes and then the lights in the eyes of the many budding, previously in-vogue coaches are extinguished too.
Take Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham Hotspur or Aston Villa’s opponents on Sunday, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and the final days of Gary O’Neil or Vitor Pereira. The ideas they were once praised for shaping now appear hollow, as if they embody the Emperor’s New Clothes. Eventually and finally, the tide turns in an unsalvageable direction.
Unai Emery’s project at Villa was not quite on a similar brink, yet it was only in September that a dangerous foreboding began to emerge.
Villa’s summer was tumultuous. Even now and with the benefit of hindsight, the initial assessment of the situation was not hyperbole. Financial sanctions during the transfer window compounded the misery of missing out on Champions League football on the final day of the previous season.
Progress was stifled and there was an increasingly stagnant mood setting in. This was an ageing squad, many of whose futures were uncertain, being comparatively weakened as direct rivals strengthened. Sporting director Monchi left, owing to developing tensions with Emery and despite hurried deadline-day activity, a feeling of decline enveloped the first five games of the season.
Villa were running less, sprinting less and did not score in the first month. Noises from the dressing room suggested players were behind the manager, but there was a crisis of confidence, especially in attack. The mood was flat, with internal frustrations centred on the lack of recruitment.
Physical and mental burnout was at risk of taking hold, an allegation usually levelled at managers when momentum is shifting away from their grasp. Considering Emery’s relentless work ethic, consisting of long hours for staff, a busy pre-season and few days off for players, Villa felt exhausted, rather than fresh.
The wretched 1-1 draw against 10-man Sunderland was the nadir. Three points from five matches led to Emery accusing players of being “lazy”. Lesser managers with lesser support from the hierarchy above (Villa have built their entire club around Emery) would have succumbed to the rising waters.
But simply put, Emery is not one of those managers. He is not a one-trick, one-system coach. His coaching methods and mentality are founded upon layers of experience and expertise. Even though he may not attain buy-in through his strength of personality off the field, that football erudition makes him one of the most eminent managers of his generation.
He has largely worked with the same players for three years and through his collective structure, he is increasing their abilities. He does it through consistency in playing habits that continue to defy unimpressive underlying metrics.
This was crystallised in the 1-0 win against Wolves on Sunday. Villa were sluggish and had to lean on luck, goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez and, as is a growing theme of the campaign, stunning long-distance strikes. Boubacar Kamara’s goal was the ninth Villa have scored from outside the box in the league this season, compensating for their overall expected goals (xG) rate being the league’s third-lowest.
Questions over Villa’s sustainability should be saved for another day, however. Besides, bluntness in attack is partially masked by Emery addressing defensive weaknesses, having conceded half the number of league goals at this stage compared to last season (11 to 22).
The truly relevant numbers are that Villa have won 11 games and lost only two in all competitions since the Sunderland match. Emery is the only manager in the club’s history to have a win percentage above 50 per cent and has lost just one of his previous 25 league fixtures at Villa Park. No team in Europe has won more matches at home over the past three years in all competitions and Emery’s 37 victories in the Premier League at Villa Park are the most of any of the club’s managers in the competition.
“When we went through a little dip, I saw some things on Twitter like, ‘Unai’s time is up now’, but then we come again,” Ross Barkley told The Athletic. “And then all the fans and people on the outside are like, ‘Wow’. It’s because he is one of the best managers in the world.”
The incredibly imposing home record typifies how consistency continues to endure under Emery. Even when Villa are bad, and they certainly were against Wolves, they found a way.
“Resilience is something you have to feel when you are struggling, you have to get resilience,” Emery told reporters last week. “Against Everton away and Sunderland away, they were not good results, but we were resilient. We were in a bad moment, but we needed to be resilient and wait to get our best moment.”
A true test of a manager’s mettle is when they face adversity, whether that is from poor results or the effectiveness of their methods being called into question, or both. Emery has shown throughout his career that he is a manager of great substance. Naturally, Villa are approaching a juncture where a renewal of their squad is a prerequisite, but few managers are better skilled to navigate a period of transition.
His team’s form, in light of the challenges from the summer and lack of squad evolution, all within the most intense and unforgiving league in the world, is startling. If they do achieve their target of a finish in the European places, it may prove to be Emery’s greatest accomplishment at Villa.
