The end of Aston Villa’s 2024-25 campaign was indicative of the contrasting emotions experienced throughout this season.
Villa thought they had taken a second-half lead on the final day at Old Trafford, only for referee Thomas Bramall to have already controversially blown his whistle.
Most cruelly, opponents Manchester United scored three minutes later before doubling their advantage late on, and the 2-0 defeat meant Villa missed out, on goal difference, on becoming the first team outside of the traditional ‘Big Six’ to qualify for the Champions League in successive campaigns.
Still, this is the third season of the Unai Emery era in which Villa have qualified to play European football in the next one. Their place in the 2025-26 Europa League means they have completed the set, having previously participated in both the Conference League and Champions League, under Emery — a significant achievement, given they were only outside the relegation zone on goal difference when the Spaniard was appointed in November 2022.
When the dust settles, amid some lingering regret, there will also be pride at Villa in how they withstood and overcame challenging circumstances this season.
Even by Emery’s sharpened methods, the week leading up to Sunday’s visit to Manchester was particularly focused. Team bonding activities took place earlier in the week, such as golf. Emery’s Spanish contingent wanted no outside noise. There was a natural edginess, realising the United game would not only define their season but shape the summer ahead.
Yet, irrespective of whether a Champions League place was secured, which would have generated a minimum of £30million ($40.64m) income, Villa would be required to sell in the coming transfer window to compensate for losses that total over £200m in the previous two sets of yearly accounts.
Who they sell, however, would depend on the result at Old Trafford. Emiliano Martinez, Leon Bailey, Boubacar Kamara, Jacob Ramsey and Ollie Watkins all have suitors, and there is interest in Morgan Rogers, too.
The club’s end-of-season awards took place last Wednesday but, unlike a year ago, when Villa learned during the ceremony that they had secured Champions League football, it was not a late night. Players and coaches had left by 10pm to try to ensure sufficient rest.
It made what transpired on Sunday afternoon more galling, with Emery disappointed by how his players started the match; Villa did not register a shot on target in the first half.
Unai Emery reacts after Villa are defeated by Manchester United (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
No Champions League revenue will inevitably threaten Emery’s constant drive for improvement, yet the club are keen to remind us he is the most important piece of their jigsaw. As long as he remains at the helm, Villa are confident of continuing on their upward curve.
Since his arrival, the now 53-year-old has fundamentally reconstructed the football department and amassed major autonomy to shape Villa in his preferred image.
“In the club, the coach for me is the most important piece,” Damian Vidagany, their director of football operations, told The Athletic in 2023. “When this piece of the club falls, the project can fall. I’m realising that, here, everyone understands a strong manager means a strong club.”
For more than half of the season, Villa did not look like a team capable of challenging for a Champions League spot, let alone taking that race to the final day. They were sub-par and labouring, punctured by dropped points against inferior opponents.
In retrospect, the damage was done during the sequence of six wins from the 21 league fixtures played between late September and the middle of February. Late goals conceded at home to Bournemouth and Brighton & Hove Albion, turning wins into draws, and taking two points from the available six against eventually-relegated Ipswich Town proved costly. Villa only won back-to-back matches twice in the season’s first four months.
But while they toiled in the domestic league, they pressed the accelerator at European level. October’s 1-0 victory against Bayern Munich is etched into club history and Emery’s vintage win so far.
“Bayern was special,” a Villa player who, like others in this piece, wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, told The Athletic. “In the dressing room after, the gaffer said, ‘Enjoy this, but not too much, because we’ve got a big one on the weekend (at home against Manchester United) that’s equally as important.’ But the boys were buzzing.
“Everyone was so happy, but it’s good to see the gaffer was straight away on us again. Three points against Bayern Munich are the same three points against any other team in the Champions League or Premier League.”
Ross Barkley celebrates at full time after Villa’s Champions League win over Bayern (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
In the league, even though Villa were staggering along, the points tally kept ticking over.
Villa only won one of the eight games following their league-phase fixtures in the Champions League, but with this manager they rarely suffer an extended skid in the Premier League — three consecutive defeats in early 2023 is the worst sequence under Emery. This season, they lost successive games just once.
February’s 4-1 battering at Crystal Palace called for deep introspection, however. They had fallen to 10th, with three clean sheets in their first 28 league matches.
Though time was ticking, figures within the club knew they had to stay calm. A month earlier, Emery relayed the same message to players when discussing the second half of the season: that this was a moment to draw a line in the sand and not stew on what had gone before.
“We had a meeting when the new players came in January and we knew that was the squad for the rest of the season,” Rogers told The Athletic last month. “The manager told us who we were playing and said the next part of the season was the most important part. We were not as consistent as we would have liked, but we had a chance to turn around.
“We were firmly in the mix in the Premier League and we knew we had to go on a run and start winning games to catch up. The games were coming thick and fast, with a lot on the line. I don’t think you could have imagined how quickly it’s all gelled together (since).”
At the end of March, only the league’s bottom five had registered fewer shots on target. Villa endeavoured to refine a more compact defensive structure while being clinical up front… and the response was startling. They ended the season keeping six clean sheets in the 10 fixtures that followed that loss to Palace. No Premier League team collected more points in this period or conceded fewer goals.
Truthfully, Villa were near-faultless. Across the 21 matches before Sunday’s defeat in Manchester, they had only lost away to a Paris Saint-Germain side who will play in Saturday’s Champions League final, to eventual FA Cup winners Palace in the semi-final — an admittedly dreadful display — and to a last-minute goal at Manchester City.
The final-day defeat against a United side who have set all sorts of unwanted records has contributed to the growing sense that Villa still carry an inferiority complex and fall short in the season’s most meaningful matches. This was underlined after the FA Cup semi-final, a day when Villa let a golden opportunity to rubber-stamp Emery’s era with a trophy pass by.
Marcus Rashford celebrates scoring against Preston North End in the FA Cup (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
While questions over mentality will be assessed, players’ physical levels showed a marked improvement, offering a sense of vindication for the coaching staff. They had been mindful of how tired players were a year earlier, having limped to a top-four finish with little left in the tank.
To ensure players had enough fuel this time around, Emery started to reduce his intense approach towards the end of 2024 to offset burnout. He gave players extra days off — sometimes to specific individuals rather than the whole squad. He also held one-on-one talks to gauge moods and on matchdays would lay a whiteboard out in the changing room and write ‘REST’ in capital letters on it.
All of this was designed for players to peak as they came around the season’s final bend. Latterly, a theme of Emery’s interviews was the insistence that he did not “want holidays” and preferred to continue playing.
“One message in my mind every day I wake up is that football is very difficult,” Emery said earlier this month. “To succeed is very difficult, because there are a lot of competitive teams. They are always improving, so I need to improve every day — I need to be better every day.”
Emery understood this was a campaign when few teams were in rude health and believed that if Villa could maximise the winter transfer window, they could make a Champions League charge or, at the very least, separate themselves from the Europa League-qualification chasing pack, which they did. Greater depth mitigated a congested schedule where Villa played five times in 13 days in February — which aggravated senior staff, considering they then played one league fixture in the whole of March.
At Emery’s request, the club arranged a warm-weather camp in Dubai during the March international break, including a couple of friendlies against local teams. While several players were away representing their countries, the trip was a chance for the rest to refresh, regroup and, most importantly, integrate January’s signings. Donyell Malen was the only newcomer absent, with Marcus Rashford, Axel Disasi, Marco Asensio and Andres Garcia all present.
“The manager brings us together to get us aligned on the same path,” Rogers said. “It’s (about) knowing that if you’re not starting, we’ve not got time to care about it, in the sense of we’ve got places we want to get to and we’ve got our mission, so there’s no time for it.
“We’ve got a competitive squad that could compete on all fronts and we don’t know who’s going to play (in a given match). We all come into training, and on the day of the game, we don’t know who’s playing. It could be anyone.”
“Garcia is not the most well-known player, but he got thrown in straight away,” adds a team-mate. “And he did a good job as he knew what to do, because, in the first two weeks, he would get so much attention to learn the basics of Emery’s principles.”
That winter recruitment was precipitated by Jhon Duran’s sale to Al Nassr for €77million (£64.5m/$87.4m at current rates).
According to two sources involved, Duran going to Saudi Arabia suited Villa. They received a significant fee, while the perceived level of the Saudi Pro League meant not many people would watch his progress there. Even if Duran did score a heap of goals, it was felt Villa would face fewer questions as to why they had sold such a precocious talent, owing to the general impression of the standard of football in Saudi.
Former colleagues, who had worked with Emery for several years, admit they know little about his personal life, with interactions geared towards total dedication on the pitch.
He is a football obsessive, appearing distracted if any game is in view. During his post-match news conference following the 1-0 victory at Bournemouth this month, Emery’s eyes seldom strayed from the television behind the seated journalists. The match on screen? Notts County versus Wimbledon in League Two, English football’s fourth tier.
His coaches are similarly fanatical. They take exceptional interest in knowing what a player does throughout the day and watch football wherever they are, although it is interspersed by regular small-sided basketball contests in the training ground’s gymnasium.
“Relentless,” says one player. “Emery doesn’t take a backwards step. He treats every opposition with a level of care and detail.”
Emery demands that all players think “70 per cent football” in everyday life. In the final months of the campaign, the dressing room was told this percentage had to increase.
The commitment to the cause was evident in the thrilling 3-2 second-leg win against PSG in the Champions League quarter-finals, which ended in a 5-4 aggregate defeat. The second-half performance, after falling 5-1 behind in the tie, reached levels Villa have not played at in a generation.
Unai Emery holds three meetings in the lead-up to a match (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Each player has their own improvement targets and will do individual work with staff after training, comprising the backroom team and sports scientists. These drills are position-specific. Such is the attention to detail and game-related sessions, players have recognised subtle improvements when experiencing those exact scenarios in matches.
“The group meetings and the detail he goes into … you don’t get away with anything,” says a player quoted earlier in this article. “Whether it’s on the ball or off the ball defensively, or maybe not even on the picture on TV, he will see it from a different angle, and he’ll say, ‘you’re not tracking back’.
“Or, if it’s just a sprint of 50 yards and it’s 30 metres away from the ball, he’ll say, ‘That’s a duel, because you have to win that battle getting back into position.’ So there’s no hiding on the pitch with him. Everyone knows that. The amount of detail helps massively. Even new players coming in get used to the system so quickly.”
Recruits must be viewed as psychologically robust to cope with the intensity. Emery holds three meetings with the team in the lead-up to a match. The first is to reflect on a previous fixture, showing players where they did well and areas of improvement, and the next focuses on the upcoming opponent, educating on what solutions can be sought to combat their strengths. The last meeting is used as a motivational tool. It will tap into a personal side, wanting to inspire players and remind them of their own talents.
Such belief did not stretch far enough at Old Trafford on Sunday. Project Emery took a blow as playing Europa League football next season was a secondary target.
There will invariably be more challenges over the summer and recriminations after not bettering last season’s fourth-placed finish, yet that Villa were in Champions League contention come their final fixture shows they are now a side able to consistently challenge to compete in Europe.
(Top photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)