John Townley gives his verdict on Aston Villa set-piece coach Austin MacPhee heading to Chelsea
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery with set piece coach Austin MacPhee
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery with set piece coach Austin MacPhee(Image: PA)
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The news that Austin MacPhee is leaving Aston Villa to join Morgan Rogers at Chelsea was the news that nobody expected or wanted on a Friday night, unless you are a Blue, that is.
BirminghamLive's Aston Villa reporter John Townley was just having a kick about on a football pitch with his mates when he broke the news of the departure of Villa's highly-regarded set-piece specialist.
A quick dash home, and he was straight on the Claret and Blue podcast for his verdict.
"It is a blow for Villa to lose Austin MacPhee. There's no two ways about it. Just from the outset, this is a bad thing for Villa. Hopefully, they can cope without him, but they're going to have to do work to do that. They're not keeping one of their best coaches.
"Unai Emery has lost an assistant and has lost MacPhee, and to make matters worse, him heading to Chelsea, as I understand it, yeah, that rubs salt in the wound because Chelsea are a direct rival to Villa.
"I don't know if there'll be any compensation. I don't know how long MacPhee's contract was worth. We'll see about that. Nobody really sees this as good news. It's clearly not that. I suspect it's because it's Chelsea. If it was Emery leaving, fair enough, but not a set- piece coach.
"Obviously, the worst thing that could happen to Aston Villa Football Club is Emery leaves, that's the big one. Anything else is work to be done, but I trust in the system to replace these people.
"It is just a set piece coach I agree, but we scored a lot of goals from set pieces last year, I think it was joint most across Europe with Arsenal, maybe, something like 28 29 goals, I think off the top of my head, I'm going to have a look at that now.
"It's a source of output for Villa that doesn't necessarily mean we were going to do that this upcoming season anyway, because of so much personnel changes to the team.
"MacPhee has been here across different coaches now, so he's clearly well-liked and well-trusted and has been part of the furniture at Bodymoor, so for him now not to be there is a difference, I suppose.
"What I would say is that I think it'll be very hard to replace Austin's creativity; he's certainly one of the best in the business. Just because change is happening doesn't mean that all of a sudden, now this is the start of the end."
To listen to the full episode, including John looking at life without MacPhee at Villa - click here