Emery 2.0 – The Rebuild Begins
Aston Villa’s record sale of the summer is done, two more first-team regulars have followed him out of the door, and a run of players in their early twenties has arrived to replace them. After over three seasons of a largely inherited core, it’s now becoming Emery’s team now.
The abbreviated story of the transfer window so far is Morgan Rogers has left for Chelsea in a £117m deal, a fee that makes him the most expensive British player in the game’s history. Youri Tielemans has joined Manchester United. Lucas Digne has returned to Paris Saint-Germain. In have come Johan Manzambi, a club-record signing despite only being 20-years-old, João Gomes, and Alejandro Garnacho.
Taken individually, each deal has its own explanation. Taken together, it’s the clearest reshaping of the squad Emery has made since he arrived at Villa Park, and it’s happening in the same summer Villa go into a second successive Champions League campaign.
What’s actually driving it isn’t simply just squad-building, and it isn’t as simple as it looks from the outside.
This week’s astonvilla.wtf newsletter, back after a break and landing every Friday from here, goes into the numbers behind the summer: what Villa’s Europa League winning season was genuinely worth set against what this rebuild is costing, and why qualifying for Europe has quietly become as much a financial obligation as a sporting one.
There’s also a first-hand account of a meeting Pro Ref, the renamed PGMOL, the organisation behind English referees and the dreaded VAR, on what’s changing behind the scenes in English refereeing.
It’s free, and this week’s issue is live now.
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