I was in the press box for Aston Villa’s first pre-season friendly against Walsall in July. A few metres away by the mouth of the tunnel before the game, the team’s manager was relaxed.
Unai Emery has done a magnificent job in charge of Villa. Since taking over from football management cosplayer Steven Gerrard in the autumn of 2022, Emery has steered his team into the European places in three consecutive seasons.
In 2024/25, they reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League and qualified for the Europa League. They got to the FA Cup semi-finals. This is a club that’s pushing for success and doing so while technically running at a negative net spend in the transfer market.
Yet the mood at Villa Park as the 2025/26 season gets underway is undeniably bleak. Villa’s owners want to invest in the playing squad. The big spending of other clubs necessitates that from Emery’s perspective too.
Villa’s efforts to comply with the financial regulations set out by the Premier League and UEFA have included a number of decisions that fly in the face of any idea of sustainability, notably selling Aston Villa Women and transferring academy graduate Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle United this summer.
Losing Ramsey has been a bitter pill to swallow and Villa’s collective anger has been made public. The situation is patently ridiculous and, while advocating for full-on free spending in the transfer market isn’t the answer, neither is laying down for unfit regulations to roll over the club and flatten it.
The individuals who have spoken out in the aftermath of Ramsey’s departure were absolutely right to do so and it’s probably time for the club to crank up their protests against the specific rules holding them back. Taking on the Premier League and UEFA head-on, though, is easier said than done.
There’s no time to waste on self-pity
Whatever legal routes Villa explore as a football club from this point forward, they cannot succumb to a victim mentality. Stand up and fight if you will, but self-pitying football teams do not win.
Football teams that win are full of players who relish challenges and back themselves, who fight and scrap and battle through whatever the sport throws at them.
To put it bluntly, winners roll with the punches. Even as the business of Aston Villa should consider standing up for itself and volunteering its advocacy for a fundamental change in the financial framework of English and European football, Emery and the football department need to focus on the Premier League job at hand.
Not after the transfer window. Not soon. Now.
The cost of distraction this season is no joke and Emery will be fully aware of that. Villa’s best route to a more favourable position is to qualify consistently for the Champions League. They have two cracks at that in 2025/26 and neither becomes any more likely by players and management feeling sorry for themselves.
Villa’s worst nightmare
To regularly qualify for Europe’s Premier club competition, Villa need a genuine world-class manager. In Emery, they have exactly that, but the idea of him losing hope and patience is beginning to rear its head in the Villa consciousness for the first time.
The rules as they stand are limiting Villa’s ability to break out of a box admittedly of their own historical making. They have made mistakes over the years and their revenue is an issue in terms of the actual health of the business.
But Ramsey’s exit and the players’ reaction have highlighted the human cost of compliance. Losing Emery despite having ambitious and wealthy club owners would be a disaster. He doesn’t seem all that relaxed about things anymore.