Unai Emery Has Turned Aston Villa Into The Premier League Team ...

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 06: Leon Bailey of Aston Villa celebrates after scoring the team's ... [+] first goal during the Premier League match between Aston Villa and Manchester City at Villa Park on December 06, 2023 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images)

Few teams beat Manchester City, let alone dominate them, but Unai Emery’s Aston Villa side managed just that this week, preventing the Premier League champions from having a single shot after the 11th minute.

The score was 1-0, but that was on the back of 22 shots by Villa, to just two shots by Manchester City. That’s reportedly the joint-most shots faced by a Pep Guardiola team, and joint-fewest created, in any league game during his time at either Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

Aston Villa’s win also put the Claret and Blues above Manchester City in the Premier League.

While only 15 games have been played so far this season, Villa’s good form stems all the way back to Emery’s appointment on 24 October 2022.

Aston Villa have the third-best record in the Premier League in 2023, winning 23 of their 37 games played this calendar year so far. Only Manchester City have won more. Compare that to 2022, when Villa, mainly under Steven Gerrard, had the 12th best record in the league.

They only won 11 games in 2022, and two of those wins came in the two matches that Emery was in charge for before the World Cup break.

Emery achieved that remarkable turnaround with basically the same players as Gerrard. Only two players in the starting eleven against Manchester City – Pau Torres and Youri Tielemans – were not at the club when Gerrard lost his job. The three Villa players with the most minutes this season – Ezri Konsa, John McGinn and Douglas Luiz have all been at the club since the 2019/20 season.

He’s generally used a 4-4-2 system out of possession and has Villa attack quickly with one full back pushing forward along with the wide midfielders. This has seen Villa score the joint-second most goals in the league, but they’ve also conceded more than the other top sides with opponents exploiting their high offside trap.

Emery’s success in the West Midlands has gone under the radar a little bit, with the initial success last season seen by some as a new manager bounce, but with more than one year in the Villa dugout now, it is clear that Aston Villa’s success is not just a short burst of form.

It also shows how an elite head coach – Emery has won the Europa League four times and coached Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain – can take a mid-table Premier League side to the next level when the players buy into the coach’s tactics.

Staying in the top four will be a challenge as the season goes on.

Villa have had a relatively settled squad so far this season apart from the injuries to Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia, but an injury crisis could derail their campaign, and while they won’t be particularly affected by the Africa Cup of Nations or Asian Cup this winter, they do still have their first campaign in the Europa Conference League which could complicate things. Villa fans will remember how their 2008-09 campaign went off the rails after defeat to CSKA Moscow in the UEFA Cup.

But whatever happens, 2023 has been a year to remember for Aston Villa.