Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villans after Brighton Loss
It’s hard to remember a more dramatic pre-season at Villa Park, and after today’s heavy defeat to Brighton, Unai Emery could be forgiven for wishing he had a few more weeks of it. Unfortunately, the season is already up and running and Villa have made just about the worst start imaginable with the core of their Europa League team gone or about to leave.
It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. With just over a week of the transfer window remaining, key players returning from injury and plenty of scope for improvement, there are still reasons for optimism. So, despite a torrid start and some painfully late departures from the squad, here are the first Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villans for the season.
Read The Room
There was no mistaking the frustration, and perhaps even anger, in Unai Emery’s post-match comments regarding Ollie Watkins and his apparent unwillingness to play for the club again. Yet, despite that obvious disappointment, Emery had appeared calm and collected in his pre-match press conference. And why wouldn’t he be?
Yes, the spine has effectively been ripped out of the side that so convincingly dispatched Freiburg in the Europa League final in Istanbul just three months ago. But Emery has been around long enough to have experienced upheaval before, rebuilt sides, and come out the other side stronger — something he alluded to himself.
Is the timing ideal? Certainly not. In a perfect world, this evolution would have taken place gradually over the previous 18 months rather than in a matter of weeks. But football rarely affords such luxuries. Villa have reached this point having qualified for the Champions League and added a second European trophy to their cabinet along the way. Few would swap those achievements for a tidier transition.
So, we are where we are. More importantly, Emery is still here, still looking forward and, crucially, backed by owners prepared to provide significant funds — within the usual alphabet soup of financial restrictions, of course — to rebuild a squad capable of competing both domestically and in Europe.
For all the noise surrounding Villa at the moment, that’s probably the most important thing to remember.
Window Dressing
Luckily, there is still sufficient time for the club to perform some emergency chiropractic manoeuvres and reset the spine. Roberto Olabe and his recruitment team will have spent the summer identifying targets for every eventuality, even if they perhaps didn’t expect quite so many contingencies to arrive at once.
It can certainly be argued that Emery should have had a stronger and fitter squad available to him on the opening day of the Premier League season. However, there are mitigating circumstances, not least the very late transfer requests landing on the desks of Villa’s decision-makers from several key players.
The business conducted so far has added quality and depth, with a clear emphasis on balancing a squad that has often looked painfully thin in recent seasons. But the equation has now changed. Depth alone is no longer enough if the spine of the starting XI isn’t adequately replaced.
That makes the remaining days of the window crucial. There is now considerable pressure on Olabe and those around him to deliver at least one quality defender, a forward capable of leading the line and another right-sided attacker to finally solve Villa’s seemingly eternal problem on that flank.
The foundations of the rebuild may already have been laid, but the next week or so will determine whether Villa emerge from the window merely with a deeper squad, or with one genuinely capable of replacing what has been lost.
History Repeating
This isn’t the first time Villa have suffered a horrific opening-day defeat, and given the club’s track record, it probably won’t be the last.
After a 5-1 opening-day tanking by Newcastle United at the start of the 2023/24 season, Villa still managed to qualify for the Champions League. Last season’s struggles extended well beyond the opening weekend, with Villa somehow managing to start the campaign seemingly allergic to scoring goals and going five games without a win. Yet that same season ultimately became the club’s most successful since 1982.
If nothing else, it should serve as a useful reminder that August rarely tells us much about where a team will be come May.
Admittedly, Emery doesn’t currently have the same experience, familiarity and cohesion within the side that helped Villa navigate last season’s difficult start. With so many new faces, some adjustment is inevitable. But it would be foolish to bet against a manager whose record over the past five years has been extraordinary.
It may take a little time for the pieces to fit together, but Emery has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to find solutions. With the Premier League widely inconsistent in recent years, there is every reason to believe Villa will find their feet in the next few months and then finish the season strong.
Changing of the Guard
While the upheaval at Villa Park has been challenging, Villa are hardly alone. As the weekend’s league fixtures demonstrated, several of the clubs around them are also navigating significant periods of transition, whether through squad overhauls, managerial changes, or entirely new tactical approaches.
Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Tottenham represent five of the traditional ‘Big Six’, yet all are rebuilding to varying degrees or adapting to substantial changes in the dugout. Villa’s problems may feel particularly acute after the opening weekend, but the landscape around them is hardly settled either.
Ultimately, Villa possess stability in arguably the one place where it matters most. Unai Emery remains at the helm, committed to the project and with the full backing of the club’s ownership. If Roberto Olabe can provide him with the players he needs before the transfer deadline, Villa should have every opportunity to settle more quickly than some of the competition around them.
Players will come and go, squads will evolve and poor results will happen. Keeping Emery provides the continuity around which everything else can be rebuilt.
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First Test for Olabe
Compared with some of the more chaotic windows under Monchi, Villa’s business this summer has been measured and decisive, with the club moving quickly to replace those who departed earlier in the window.
The more recent transfer requests from Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa, and Ollie Watkins are unlikely to have come entirely out of the blue. While there is a fair argument that Villa could — and perhaps should — have acted sooner, getting the right replacements through the door is ultimately more important than simply getting bodies in quickly.
This is Roberto Olabe’s first real test at Villa. The relatively controlled business earlier in the summer is one thing; replacing three established members of the team’s spine in the final days of a transfer window is quite another.
However, the recruitment completed so far should have earned Olabe and his team a degree of faith from supporters. There is still time to get it right, and if Villa emerge from deadline day with genuine quality replacing those heading for the exit, a week that currently feels rather bleak could ultimately prove to be the defining moment of Olabe’s first summer at the club.
PS – If you want a 6th point…with Villa losing 4-0 and down to 10-men by half-time, it could have got seriously ugly on the south coast. Hopefully, the rot has already stopped.
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Follow Armen on Twitter/X here – @VillanArmen
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