Unai Emery – how does Aston Villa’s manager get his results?
Last Sunday, his Aston Villa side were held to a draw at Ipswich Town, a team many have tipped for Premier League relegation. But then on Wednesday, Villa produced a superb display to defeat European giants Bayern Munich, on a raucous evening on the claret and blue side of Birmingham.
“He gets really angry when he sees the players not doing the things that have taken them to the Champions League and he lets them know all about that,” said Spanish football expert Guillem Balague of his compatriot.
“The day after the draw against Ipswich, he varied his training session because of what had happened instead of simply planning for Bayern.
“He has an impressive CV and knows what it takes to win at whatever level and he is applying those skills at Villa.”
During a season of farce and failure on and off the pitch in 2015-16, Villa were heavily criticised for a rebranding exercise in which they removed the word ‘prepared’ from their club crest.
And while it has not returned on the players’ shirts, Emery has become the personification of the long-standing motto since he walked through the doors at Villa Park in October 2022.
A focus on small details was the underlying theme early in his reign, with his own ‘marginal gains’ approach to technical and tactical aspects of the game laying the platform for the club’s transformation from strugglers in 14th to seventh and then fourth-placed finishes.
“I’m not the kind of coach who says, ‘Let’s do a few piggy-in-the-middle exercises and go home for lunch,” he once said.
Stories quickly emerged of how he had compiled dossiers on each of his players before joining Villa, and then once in the role, how he could often be seen leaving the club’s Bodymoor Heath training ground late into the night.
A regular in the club’s gym, his time on the treadmills and bikes is not used solely for exercise or to listen to music or podcasts.
It is here that he watches repeatedly and analyses recordings of upcoming opponents’ strengths and weaknesses before relaying them to his players.
“He can typically watch the video of the same game four or five times and he then goes into the analysis with the players himself adding details and lines to explain whatever he wants, what went wrong, what to improve,” Balague added.
“These meetings can be over an hour long, talking about attacking and defence in a lot of detail. From general ideas on how the game should go, movements and positional information, to scenarios they will face.
“The detail in the session before the Bayern game was a 70-minute chat about how the German side attack and how Villa could counter and attack themselves. So every player walking onto the pitch is filled with the information they need.
“He is also very big on individual coaching so his players all get clips on their direct opponent. The important thing is that he is surrounded by people who work as long and as hard as he does. After all his media duties were done, they spent two hours after Wednesday’s game talking about it before training on Thursday morning.”
Former England and Villa winger Tony Morley, who won the European Cup with the club in 1982, added: “Emery’s substitutions this season and ever since he came to the club have been first class.
“His awareness of what it is going on, on the pitch, is as good as anyone else.”
