The laboured Carabao Cup victory against a League One side by the odd goal did not feel like a night for long-standing Aston Villa records to be broken.
But as Unai Emery headed down the tunnel at Wycombe Wanderers’ Adams Park at full time on Tuesday with familiar understatement and clad in a black tracksuit — often a go-to outfit for not necessarily the most glamorous of Villa’s away games — he had just got to 50 wins quicker than any other manager in the club’s 150-year history
Emery achieved the feat in 90 matches, three quicker than Joe Mercer, who took charge in 1958.
A half-century of victories in less than two years in charge is striking for just about any club but particularly one such as Villa whose position appeared perilous when predecessor Steven Gerrard was sacked in October 2022, only out of the Premier League’s three relegation places on goals scored.
The subsequent transformation under the Spaniard has been remarkable, with several standout performances defining his reign.
Villa 1 Manchester City 0; December 6, 2023
A performance for the ages. This match was a crystallisation of Emery’s principles being executed to perfection, dominating the Premier League champions to the extent that the 1-0 scoreline felt merciful.
City barely landed a punch on Villa all night, conceding what is still the highest number of shots they have faced in a Premier League game (22) since Pep Guardiola became manager in summer 2016 and registering just two of their own, both in the first 11 minutes — only five times have a Guardiola-managed City side had fewer in the top flight. Leon Bailey’s 74th-minute goal was a long-overdue reward for Villa’s dominance.
In preparation for the game, Emery led typical lengthy analysis sessions that ran for up to an hour and 15 minutes. He stressed the necessity of retaining possession for prolonged spells, remaining courageous to control the tempo of play and, at opportune moments, to cut through City’s front-line pressure.
Emery had soft-launched a box-midfield shape three days earlier, in a 2-2 draw away against Bournemouth, knowing Villa would need to overload central areas and lock on man-to-man against a City team who were without the suspended Rodri. From a defensive standpoint, selecting four archetypal central midfielders reduced the visitor’s counter-attacking threat, with ‘rest defence’ primary in the Spaniard’s thinking.
Villa won possession in their attacking third 13 times, setting a record for an opposition team against Guardiola’s City — a further demonstration of their most well-oiled display under Emery.
Villa 1 Arsenal 0; December 9, 2023
Three days on from beating City, Villa caused more waves in the title race.
John McGinn’s goal on seven minutes turned out to be one of the few home attacks (Villa had three shots on target all game), but served as a snapshot of how meticulous and well-drilled Emery’s choreographed patterns of play are. The decisive move had started with goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez before Villa moved upfield, breaking Arsenal’s pressing block and progressing into the wide areas, where Bailey supplied Emery’s trademark cutback cross to McGinn.
Unlike the midweek battle with City, this victory against Arsenal was built on defensive resolve, with Villa limited to 38 per cent possession and often pinned back. Legs were tiring but minds did not and these back-to-back wins made a serious argument for Villa as contenders to qualify for the Champions League. Emery described the period as “the most difficult week” beforehand — the physical toll it took made the resulting glory all the more exceptional.
Arsenal 0 Villa 2; April 14, 2024
Every key win has tended to be rubber-stamped by Villa breaking new ground.
This victory at the Emirates Stadium shattered Arsenal’s latest title bid with a month of the season to go and was a club-record 19th in a 38-game Premier League campaign.
Contextually, this match was sandwiched between the two legs of the Conference League quarter-final against Lille.
The French side were afforded a weekend off by their football association (who had more scheduling wiggle room with an 18-team top division to England’s 20 and only one domestic cup competition) while Villa, against a backdrop of injuries, fixture pile-up and general wear late in a long season, were facing their most arduous challenge.
Emery was resolute in not finding solace with excuses. The plan was well communicated as backroom staff held three separate meetings with the players on the day of the game, which was a 4.30pm kick-off on a Sunday.
Villa had just about managed to stave off Arsenal’s first-half threat, but were not the “protagonists” Emery desired. The adjustments made at the break brought a shift in momentum.
The coaching staff realised Villa could not play fast and loose, needing greater ball retention but the same level of threat on transition. The 4-1 defeat away to City 11 days earlier was, in hindsight, beneficial, as Emery intended to use the same structure of the front four — with Nicolo Zaniolo on the left and Moussa Diaby on the right — as ball-carrying vehicles.
“The only way to win here is to keep possession,” said Emery, a former Arsenal manager, of the Emirates. “If we tried to run behind for 90 minutes, it would have been difficult. The plan after half-time was to continue building up, avoiding their press, and with Zaniolo, we started holding up the ball more.”
Villa took control and Arsenal ran out of gas. Bailey opened the scoring on 84 minutes before Ollie Watkins’ dinked finish three minutes later served as a fitting crescendo.
Emery showed once more he is arguably Europe’s best game-to-game coach in terms of tailoring plans to exploit an opponent.
Villa 3 Newcastle United 0; April 15, 2023
Watkins punctuated another of Emery’s memorable wins. The forward scored twice in the second half to halt Champions League-bound Newcastle’s five-match winning run.
The gulf between the sides was emphatic and this game proved a significant step in Villa qualifying for the Conference League. Newcastle were swept away by intensity, overwhelmed in the early stages and pulled apart by the close control of Jacob Ramsey between the lines and Watkins’ aggressive movement.
Goalkeeper Nick Pope kept Newcastle in the match until midway through the second half, but Villa’s sustained pressure was too much. It led to a 12th win in Emery’s first 18 league matches.
Villa 6 Brighton & Hove Albion 1; September 30, 2023
Pre-match, Emery said Brighton counterpart Roberto De Zerbi was “one of the best coaches in the world”. The pair shared an ideology, desiring control of games through patient build-up patterns that aimed to bait opponents into pressing, so defenders could then hit incisive passes through the spaces those players left behind.
Brighton were one of Europe’s most assured sides, rotational in their movement and rarely flustered. Emery and his band of half a dozen analysts pored over footage of them. They devised a risky stylistic match-up that could perturb Brighton. Emery spoke to his players on matchday, explaining a more direct approach would crack the visitors’ press and ball dominance.
The strategy carried a loss of control but, as Emery explained after, Brighton demanded “a different tactical game plan”. Emery encouraged particular players to go longer in their distribution, bypassing Brighton’s man-marking system. He identified one-v-one match-ups across the pitch, some regarded as conducive and others not.
“We needed to find the players who can fight man to man and two against two,” he said.
“I was thinking this morning when the manager did the tactics meeting, ‘It’s going to be 6-1 to us or 6-1 to them’,” smiled McGinn.
In 13 first-half minutes, Villa scored three times to lead 3-0 after 26 minutes. Watkins later completed his hat-trick and De Zerbi, walking into the press conference suite after, seemed to be wearing the scars.
Villa have become a winning machine with Emery’s desire for consistency evident. Not just when it comes to performance levels, but in staying emotionally balanced.
It is why he quietly heads straight for the tunnel immediately at full time, regardless of the result, deep in thought but the cogs in his mind whirring.
(Top photo: Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images)
