The Good, Bad and Ugly Adrenaline Shot Special
Just when all seemed lost, the return of Captain John McGinn and Unai Emery’s adopted son Youri Tielemans has driven a syringe full of adrenaline through the breastplate of the comatose Aston Villa. With the final straight in sight, it’s time to hit the afterburners.
The Good
The wins at home to Lille and West Ham, coupled with the faltering of Liverpool and Chelsea, have put Aston Villa back in charge of their own destiny.
Over the last few match weeks, there was a real chance that Villa could have been sitting sixth going into the international break with work to do.
Instead, it’s fourth with a gap of five from Liverpool and six from Chelsea. It’s not the impenetrable buffer from before the slump, but it’s a healthy lead with seven games and 21 points to play for.
Villa need to take care of business themselves over the next run of games to make sure all the joy this season has brought at times doesn’t become the biggest missed opportunity since Martin O’Neill’s tenure
Not only was the West Ham game a much-needed victory, it was also a return to the performances of earlier in the season, attacking variety, solid in defence and combative in midfield. Where had this Villa been since the turn of the year?
Villan of the Week – John McGinn
There was really no other choice. From stories of sharing a personal trainer with Dua Lipa to doing warm-down sprints in front of the travelling Villa fans in Lille, you could sense that McGinn was raring to get back and help stem the bleed that the season had become since the injuries to him, Kamara, and Tielemans.
Just like his goals vs Bologna and Fulham earlier in the season, his strikes vs Lille and West Ham have dragged Villa out of a hole.
McGinn needs one more goal to be Villa’s top scorer in European competitions, and do you want to bet against him getting it soon?
The Bad
The standard of the Premier League is poor this season. From Villa being the only team to win in the first round of last 16 European games, to the beatings dished out to Manchester City, Newcastle and Tottenham Hotspur by the top three in La Liga, to a 35-year-old Danny Welbeck being the top-scoring English man in the league, this should have been an eye opener for the people who believe the Premier League is the pinnacle.
Other leagues look at a game against the Premier League teams as a chance to show that money doesn’t always guarantee success, and there is still room for actual football to weave its way around the long throws, set pieces, and crowded penalty areas.
While Premier League teams may still triumph in Europe, and of course we hope Villa do, there is no guarantee that the tactics that have dominated the league season will succeed in arenas like the Allianz, Nou Camp and Bernabeu.
The Ugly
How can the powers that be at Aston Villa get commercial decisions so wrong?
After a poor run of form and a moment of relief and happiness against Lille, they managed to sour the mood again with the ticket announcement for the next round against Bologna.
For a moment, we will park the actual prices, which were decided upon back in May 2025 by Ben Hatton, Villa’s Chief Operating Officer, because there’s no chance of Villa being dynamic in the right direction, and focus on how they were announced.
Villa’s ‘FOMO Department’ decided to put the ticket details out for the home leg against Bologna when most fans hadn’t even made it home from Villa Park after beating Lille.
Better than that, they gave season ticket holders three days to secure their seats before payday, of course.
The Villa FOMO department have previous, releasing a 15% season ticket price increase in April 2023, right off the back of Villa beating Newcastle 3-0, then bombarding Villa fans on the waiting list with GA+ season ticket upsell emails with Champions League ticket access as bait.
Get them while they’re giddy is very much the mantra.
In terms of Bologna, it’s not that there is any urgency with the international break coming up; it’s give them a bigger period to market expensive tickets and to milk as much money out of the fans that want to attend as possible. Short-term balance sheet instead of long-term investment.
It’s a simple choice and blunt way of doing business that goes against any message Unai Emery has tried to get across to the fans in the programme notes.
Any Villa commercial team with foresight and not an opportunist’s mindset would have done everything within their power to make sure that the ground was as full for the manager, and that fans were in good spirits for a game that Villa will need their 12th man. Instead, their focus is trying to repackage the Europa League as a premium product and setting up a situation to push the GA+ offerings that were half empty against Lille.
With beautiful timing, Nottingham Forest reduced their prices for the same level of the same competition for arguably a more glamorous quarter-final against FC Porto. Villa tickets range from £77 to £65, while the equivalent Forest ticket is £40-£25. Let’s say an average difference of £25-£30.
Despite having a smaller stadium, Forest’s primary focus is obviously to improve their chances of getting through to the semi-final. The reported £3.9 million prize money they’d earn for that stage, plus an extra round of gate receipts from an extra game at the City Ground, would dwarf any extra money they could have tried to squeeze out of their fans for the quarter-final.
It’s a no-brainer and galvanises the club and fans, before the big game.
Maybe you have to be a two-time European Cup winner like Nottingham Forest to be able to change your prices to benefit fans?
Meanwhile, the optics are bad for Villa, who have simply shown how to make an ugly mess of qualifying for your third European quarter-final in three seasons.
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