View: Aston Villa must trust Unai Emery and be patient to taste success
If Aston Villa want to taste the success that their appointment of Unai Emery suggests they want, then patience is something they must exercise.
After gaining promotion with Dean Smith at the helm, the club showed great restraint not to sack him during the 2019/20 season when it looked like they could be on their way back to the Championship immediately.
They invested heavily after that and saw great benefits to letting Jack Grealish off the leash as he turned in arguably the best season of his career and helped Villa push up to an 11th placed finish, which arguably should have been higher if not for a collapse towards the end.
They then sold Grealish for £100m to Manchester City, and invested the money right back into the squad with the signings of Danny Ings, Leon Bailey and Emi Buendia, but Smith couldn’t get the same tune out of them.
After a poor start to the season he was sacked and replaced by Steven Gerrard, who didn’t even make it to the one year anniversary of his appointment before he was sacked earlier this season.
The owners made sure that the club wouldn’t stay stagnant though.
Where Gerrard was a gamble of an appointment, with the club trying to get ahead of the curve by bringing in someone unproven but with a good reputation, they did the opposite this time around.
They went to Spain and brought in Emery, who for all his flaws has proven to be a serial winner for the teams outside of the elite across Europe.
Since joining Sevilla in 2013, he has since managed three other teams without including this stint at Villa Park.
In Seville Emery dominated Europe’s secondary competition on a shoestring budget, winning the Europa League three seasons in a row between 2013 and 2015.
In Paris he initially lost the title race to that Monaco team that included the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Bernardo Silva, Radamel Falcao and Fabinho, but he still managed to win three cup competitions in that first season.
He wont the title the next season, and won all the cups again before leaving for Arsenal to take on the ungodly task of replacing Arsene Wenger.
After struggling in England initially he still managed to reach the Europa League final with the Gunners, losing to Chelsea at the final hurdle and thus marking his only trophyless spell at a club since 2013.
He then moved to Villarreal following his sacking and won them the first trophy in their history, once again conquering Europe by beating Manchester United in the Europa League final.
He did this all playing his own way, and that takes time to implement. Aston Villa must allow him that time to do so, because his track record has proven that he is more than capable of delivering success to the club.
The board have given him the longest managerial contract in the club’s history, and the backroom staff situation is going the way he wants it to, bringing in his own men and keeping some around too.
But with this season now essentially a write-off, they must give him the chance to evaluate the squad properly and then make the necessary moves during the upcoming three transfer windows.
Let him build his squad the way he sees fit, with no exceptions. Be strong when it comes to sales if he wants you to be, and be ruthless with decisions if he demands it. He has earned that right.
If the club and fans begin to panic at the slightest sign of some bad form or a decision that they’re not entirely sure about, then this entire process will prove to be completely pointless.
Trust him to do what he’s always done, and he will do what he always does. Villa have got the perfect man for their ambitions at the helm.
In other Aston Villa news, Matheus Cunha’s potential arrival could spell the end of Danny Ings