Unai Emery has no intention of changing Aston Villa captaincy
New Aston Villa manager Unai Emery has announced that he has no plans to change the captaincy away from John McGinn.
The Scottish international was awarded the armband by Steven Gerrard who opted to strip Tyrone Mings of the privilege before the season began.
He then left the defender on the bench on the opening day and was eventually sacked after a string of poor results to bring Emery to Villa Park.
The Spaniard was introduced as the new Villa boss on Friday (4 November) and revealed that despite controversy surrounding McGinn’s appointment as skipper, he was not going to change anything immediately.
“I am not going to change what they had here,” Emery said, as quoted by Birmingham Live. “I want to check and test. I want to know the team and the players and then I will decide but not now.”
Bigger issues
Emery has an awful lot on his plate in the Midlands to turn around what could have been described as a sinking ship under Gerrard and who has the armband is not a big concern.
In truth, every player should be trying to act like a captain whenever they are representing the football club on and off the pitch so who is the official skipper should not matter at all.
McGinn and Mings have seemingly moved past the debacle of pre-season and the media constantly bringing it back up is not helping matters at all.
Emery’s first port of call has to be to try and find a system that gets the best out of the players he has at hand but with only three games until the World Cup break, that might be a struggle.
A handy January transfer budget would be nice to see some fresh faces at Bodymoor but Aston Villa spent plenty in the summer without any big outgoings so that could be tough too.
In other Aston Villa news, Paul Merson has predicted Sunday’s (6 November) game against Manchester United and it isn’t good reading for Villans.