Can Europa League specialist Unai Emery jumpstart Aston Villa’s season as European league phase begins?

Unai Emery is back in his happy place. After serving notice to his faltering side on Sunday, where they scored their first league goal of the season in an otherwise disastrous 1-1 draw with Sunderland, the Aston Villa manager needs the fillip that the Europa League has historically provided to him.

His four trophies, three with Sevilla and the 2021 title with Villarreal, make him the most successful manager in the history of both the competition and its predecessor, the UEFA Cup. Even when he doesn’t win it, Emery finds a way to go deep: finalist with Arsenal in 2019, the quarter and semifinals with Atletico Madrid. This is a competition that galvanizes the 53-year-old and his players. That is something he desperately needs.

Right now, Aston Villa appear to be a team teetering on a cliff edge. The drop would be nothing like as bad as bad as some have been in recent memory; after all this is a club that was vying for its Premier League status when Emery took over, and its long-term future less than a decade ago. Still, a club that wished for last season’s Champions League meeting with Bologna to be one of many probably didn’t have in mind running into the same team but in less salubrious surroundings 12 months later. 

Aston Villa are paying a heavy price for their failure to return to the Champions League. They had gambled big money in January on a push into the top five, loaning Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio while recruiting Donyell Malen for nearly $30 million despite not having space for the latter in their European squad. The sale of academy graduate Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle helped to fund signings for the summer, but the market has long since cooled on veterans and so far this season Villa have the second oldest squad in the league behind Fulham. Emiliano Martinez’s struggles to get the move to Manchester United that he coveted are instructive; no-one is paying big bucks for only a couple of prime years.

There has been much grumbling in Birmingham about the impact of PSR — Ezri Konsa said during the international break that it had “really killed” Villa — but to blame regulations in place long before their big spending spree is to fail to acknowledge that too much of the recruitment over the last three years has failed to strengthen the team Emery inherited and dramatically improved. Only two of the 10 players who have started three-plus Premier League games this season, Morgan Rogers and Youri Tielemans, were signed for this coach. Too many deals have had the look of PSR wheezes, the sort that inevitably end with Villa landed with a young player who spends years out on loan without ever fully returning to the mothership.

It is hard to be as successful in the transfer window as you might like when the clubs above you have so much room to spend and your predecessors have boxed you in, but if anyone was supposed to work miracles in the market it was Monchi, whose double act with Emery brought such success to Sevilla. He was never quite able to find the next Dani Alves or Ivan Rakitic at Villa Park and has returned to Spain for personal reasons. His successor is another great talent spotter from Spain and it will be intriguing to see if former Real Sociedad director of football Roberto Olabe can tap markets such as Ecuador, where during his time at Independiente del Valle he played a key role in nurturing a golden generation that includes Piero Hincapie and Pervis Estupinan.

Europa League action begins this week, and as always you can tune in across CBS Sports Network, CBS Sports Golazo Network and Paramount+ to catch all the European action.

The departure of a key ally will bring questions for Emery, who has struggled to hide his frustration at a record of four draws and two defeats to start the season. Matty Cash’s goal at the Stadium of Light on Sunday ensured that Villa became the last club in England’s top four divisions to get on the scoreboard, but the manager berated his “lazy” players for the nature of their concession to 10-man Sunderland, who ended the game the more likely to score the winner than Villa. For now, there is no sense that the frustration emanating from Emery might be reflected back at him by supporters or his employers. After all, in three seasons he has taken this team from the relegation zone to consecutive seasons of European football. It is revenue more than coaching nous that will establish the side from England’s second city as one of the Premier League’s big beasts.

And yet, this slow start to the season does prompt a few doubts about Villa. Take as a given that Emery has established Villa around a top eight but was the fourth placed finish in 2023-24 more due to the weird way that Chelsea and Newcastle’s performances were reflected in their results than anything his team got right and Villa’s non-penalty expected goal difference (npxGD) over Emery’s two full seasons is 6.39, nothing to be sniffed at for sure but more at the level of Brighton and Crystal Palace than Chelsea or Newcastle, their attack just lacking the teeth of last season’s top five.

The bigger question is whether the Premier League is moving away from a style of play that suits Emery. There is more and more focus on athleticism, wing play and rapid counter-attacking. Villa are not without talent to suit that approach, particularly if Morgan Rogers can show his England form at club level once more, but it is not one that sits easily with a coach whose sides approach the flanks with the skittishness of a pilot hovering by the Bermuda Triangle. The league sample size is only five games, but what if an npxGD of -3.87, a bar only Burnley slither under, is telling us something about how Emery copes with this new meta?

Perhaps the Europa League can serve as salvation. By dint of being a team from England, Villa are going to be bigger, quicker and more technically adept than almost anyone else that crosses their path. The bookmakers make them favorites to win the competition by a fair margin and anyone who witnessed Emery’s sole full season in charge of Arsenal will know he is prepared to sacrifice league games in pursuit of silverware. Given that this season is hardly shaping up to be one of top five contention for Villa, it may not be long before Emery concludes that it is is the best route to the Champions League.

Achieve yet another Europa League and Emery’s status as one of Villa’s great modern managers will be indisputable. He will have taken them to a far happier place than any this club have been in during three largely exceptional years. If, however, the Premier League woes bleed into the European odyssey, then Villa’s passage to Istanbul threatens to be a trying one.