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What went well
The best season in a generation just about sums it up. Five years on from the Championship, the Champions League awaits after Unai Emery steered Aston Villa to fourth – their highest finish since the 1995-96 season.
In August, this didn’t seem at all likely. Days after Emiliano Buendia suffered an ACL injury in training that would rule him out for the season, Tyrone Mings did likewise in their Premier League opener, a hefty 5-1 defeat at Newcastle.
Despite that loss, Sir Alex Ferguson saw something in this Villa side, still backing the club to succeed in a clip that would be recirculated in May. “To be honest with you, I watched Aston Villa and I can’t believe the scoreline,” Ferguson said. “They played fantastic football and just lost to bad goals.”
Those comments led to some scorn, but that man knows a thing or two, and sure enough Villa proved him right, quickly emerging as top-four contenders thanks to a run of eight consecutive league wins at Villa Park to start the campaign, including victories over Arsenal and Manchester City.
Without Buendia and Mings, crucial to Villa’s success was the spine of Emiliano Martinez, Ezri Konsa, John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Ollie Watkins remaining fit throughout the season, with Watkins’ standout efforts resulting in him being shortlisted for Premier League awards.
All the more remarkable was Villa’s ability to sustain their push for fourth with a deep run in Europe, where they exited the Europa Conference League at the semi-final stage after losing to Olympiakos in May.
What went badly
A negative that will eventually be spun into a positive, like those awful job interview questions about one’s own weaknesses… Villa had been favourites to win the Europa Conference League, but that semi-final defeat – where they were outplayed over two legs – stung an exhausted and stretched squad, and prolonged a wait for silverware that goes back to 1996.
There will therefore be no night in Athens to savour, where the final takes place later this month, but from September there will be a European tour of the like few Villa supporters have ever experienced. The calibre of their knockout opponents should also stand them in good stead come the Champions League, with ties against Lille, Ajax and Olympiakos giving this squad some much-needed big-game experience, which Watkins had bemoaned their lack of back in April.
The new Champions League format guarantees Villa at least eight matches – potentially 10 if they are among the top 24 of the 36 teams competing – and almost certainly two meetings with European heavyweights, and when that anthem plays out for the first time at Villa Park, it will be some marker of how far this team have progressed under Emery in less than two years.
He may not have delivered a trophy, but he has reinstilled belief and drastically lifted the mood around Villa Park, where tickets are now hard to come by. That is the measure of success, and given they have just punched above their weight – finishing above the world’s richest club, as well as two sides that have spent more than £1bn on players in the past decade – to many Villa fans that feeling is as good as any trophy.
Player of the season
An easy pick: Ollie Watkins. The 28-year-old ended the season with the second-most goal contributions of any Premier League player (32), one behind Cole Palmer. His 19 league goals matches Christian Benteke’s tally for Villa in 2012-13, while he topped the overall assists chart with 13 – two more than Palmer and three more than Kevin De Bruyne.
That return has made him a near-certainty for Gareth Southgate’s England squad for Euro 2024, and though opportunities may be few and far between in Germany with Harry Kane ahead of him, Watkins should prove a useful deputy if called upon.
It took a few by surprise, this visible improvement, but having hit double digits for goals in every league campaign since 2016-17 (in League Two with Exeter City), Watkins is no one-season wonder, and will be eager to prove his worth on the biggest stage of all from September.
Breakthrough player of the season
Morgan Rogers arrived from Middlesbrough in the mid-season window for an initial £8m and eventually forced his way into Emery’s plans, starting eight Premier League games in a row from March to May – scoring in three of those games.
At 21, he is on the younger side of a squad primarily in their prime, but an evident maturity and useful versatility has left Emery both impressed and surprised.
“He’s helping us more than the expectation we had,” Emery said. “His adaptation has been very quick and he has been really competitive in every position – No 10, No 8, inside or outside. He is a player. He is intelligent. He understands football.”
High praise indeed, and it looks like Villa have landed a bargain.
Best performance of the season
In early December, a week that will be talked about for years at Villa Park, with a 1-0 win over Manchester City on the Wednesday followed by a 1-0 win over Arsenal on the Saturday. Villa rode their luck against Arsenal, but the performance against City was an utter rarity: a 90 minutes where a Pep Guardiola side was thoroughly outplayed, resulting in some staggering stats.
Villa reduced City to just two shots, the fewest in any of Guardiola’s then 535 games in a big-five league, while Villa’s 22 shots were the most a Guardiola side had faced in that same period.
It would make Villa outside shouts for the title, but in reality it provided a foundation for the belief that top four was truly possible.
The Score is Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Monday morning next season
