How is Aston Villa’s Midfield Shaping Up?
Every successful team eventually has to answer the same question: what happens when the players who got you there start leaving? Aston Villa are answering it this summer, afterlosing Youri Tielemans and Morgan Rogers from midfield in the same window they return to the Champions League. With Amadou Onana also injured from a midfield that has been a core reason behind their success, it isn’t just a transfer story; it is a test of whether a club can rebuild and compete at the top level at once.
The instinct is to treat this as normal squad turnover. Players leave, players arrive, life goes on. But the scale of what has actually gone is easy to understate. Emery himself described Tielemans as close to a coach on the pitch, the one figure most responsible for implementing the tactical plan in real time. Rogers was the closest thing this Villa side had to a one-man match-winner, the player that could create something out of nothing, the Champions League win over Celtic was a perfect example of Rogers fully firing. Losing either would be a significant blow. Losing both in the same summer, while simultaneously trying to compete in Europe’s premier club competition, is something else again.
Just over a fortnight out from the Premier League opener at Brighton, this week’s My Old Man Said podcast episode asks the question Villa’s midfield can’t avoid: is it actually good enough for the Champions League and the upcoming season? With Tielemans and Rogers gone, João Gomes and Johan Manzambi are meant to replace them — not like for like, but to create a different type of midfield. Manzambi’s injury since the World Cup has denied supporters a chance in pre-season to see how that might manifest itself.
The show’s conversation works through the practical questions first. Is Gomes the same kind of deep-lying orchestrator Tielemans was, or something with more bite and less silk? Can Boubacar Kamara handle a full season without breaking down again, and would shifting him fractionally further forward protect him or just expose someone else? Where will Manzambi actually play for Villa — box-to-box eight, wide left, or as the 10 in Rogers’ shoes, and does Alejandro Garnacho’s arrival settle that question or complicate it further?
Is Emery looking to refresh his tactical approach on top of rebuilding, and whether a club can safely attempt one of those in the same season it returns to the Champions League. There’s also the cautionary tales of clubs like West Ham and Spurs, and indeed historic Villa, in terms of what can come on the heels of European glory.
There are no predictions or certainty, just an honest account of how much of this team’s midfield capacity remains genuinely unknown with the season weeks away.
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Credits:
David Michael – @myoldmansaid
Chris Budd – @BUDD_music
Phillip Shaw – @prsgame
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