Most teams in the battle for Champions League qualification are staggering to the line, battered, exhausted, done in by a season which feels like it finished in February but somehow still has a month to run. But as they falter, Aston Villa have seemingly found another gear.
Liverpool are secure in the Champions League qualification slots and Arsenal soon will be, which leaves the remaining three places between five contenders who are separated by just two points, although Nottingham Forest face Tottenham on Monday. Forest, though, have won just three of their last eight in the league. Newcastle had won six in a row in all competitions before Saturday’s 4-1 defeat to Villa. Manchester City are unbeaten in five in the league. Chelsea have won five of their last 11 in the league and have a notably tough run in. But Villa have won 10 of 11 in all competitions, the only blip their Champions League defeat away to Paris Saint-Germain. There is no question that they are the side in form.
Villa’s performance in beating Newcastle was one of their best under Unai Emery, perhaps not quite as good as in last season’s 1-0 win over Manchester City, but just as relentless, just as remorseless. There was an intensity and ferocity Newcastle couldn’t live with. Their stand-in manager, Jason Tindall, blamed the fact his side had had to play three games in six days – which up to a point is fair enough; everybody is exhausted. But Newcastle have not played European football this season, while Villa had just fought through a gruelling Champions League quarter-final second leg against PSG on Tuesday, and have an FA Cup semi-final to come against Crystal Palace next Saturday. Fatigue is an excuse for everybody – and thus for nobody.
It was also striking how cleverly Villa played, repeatedly going direct to Ollie Watkins to bypass the Newcastle press, and focusing their attacks down their left (almost four times as many as down the right), targeting the space behind Newcastle’s Kieran Trippier. This, like so much of Villa’s progress over the past three years, was a triumph for Emery. Even his insistence that Villa should be “angry” after their Champions League exit, brilliantly well as they played, proved a masterstroke. It would have been very easy for Villa to be flat on Saturday, for there to be a sense of anticlimax; instead they produced their best performance of the season.
Received wisdom has it that January signings are best avoided, that they are a sign of desperation. Villa turned that theory on its head. Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio in particular have added edge and dynamism, while Donyell Malen has also weighed in with a couple of useful goals. But perhaps most significantly, they have added depth. Where other sides have tired, Villa have a bench that has given them variety and freshness. Watkins admitted to being furious not to start either PSG game; the result was that, fuelled by the desire to prove a point, he played with zip and drive and scored within the first minute against Newcastle.
Whether Villa will be able to sign with Rashford or Asensio on a permanent basis is unclear. Quite apart from anything else, Manchester United may decide they don’t want to let Rashford go, now he has been rejuvenated. Villa lost £85.9m ($114m) in the last financial year, the biggest deficit of any English club, taking losses over the past three years to £206m, well beyond the £105m threshold for SPR compliance. There are, though, £90m of acceptable deductions, and a tweak to their accounting period probably brings them just inside the limits. But they are close to the line, which could restrict spending in the short term and qualification for the Champions League would give them additional breathing space.
The owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, who bought the club completely from Tony Xia in August 2019, may have invested heavily, but there is still disquiet among fans, both about ticket prices and the way certain sections of the ground have been reallocated for corporate guests. This is a huge gripe more generally in the Premier League. Returning from Anfield last week, I heard two US visitors expressing bewilderment that the market didn’t just take its course which, given demand, would inflate prices three or fourfold for the top clubs. From a purely capitalistic point of view, of course, they are right, but football clubs in England have always been more than soulless vehicles for the enrichment of their owners; it’s only this new breed of owners who disdain their community role, what they mean for the people brought up in the shadows of their stadiums whose families have been going for generations.
However valid those concerns about the ownership may be, though, they are at least partially quelled when there is success on the pitch. And Villa, at the moment, are playing extremely good football under an extremely good manager. Back-to-back qualifications for the Champions League would go a long way towards establishing the club among the elite.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.