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What Unai Emery said in assessment of Villa’s draw with Nashville in pre-season

 Sumeet Paul  August 3, 2025
Aston Villa boss Unai Emery re-emphasised the key factors he’s testing out after our 2-2 draw with Nashville SC in our last pre-season outing of our USA tour.

Having picked up a draw and win against Eintracht Frankfurt and St. Louis City respectively prior to this encounter, Villa had another useful run-out in Nashville as our time in the US drew to a close.

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Goals from Ollie Watkins and Donyell Malen had put us two up, but the hosts came storming back in the second half to secure a share of the spoils, with Villa once again making significant changes at the break with the objective of giving everyone minutes and getting their match fitness up to the level required.

Emery has spoken a lot on this tour about working on our structure and ensuring that every player gets playing time to help them feel comfortable in the side as we ramp up our preparations for the start of the new Premier League season in just two weeks time, and the Villa boss certainly sounded pleased with how the tour in the USA has gone in allowing him to tick those boxes.

“We’re finishing here our pre-season in the United States with the match we played,” Emery told reporters, as per VillaTV. “With the same objective, play all the players available and mixing young players with players getting fit.

“Of course, it’s not my objective now to play or set the starting XI players. I want to try to get everyone in the same structure and in the same combination or different combinations we can have.

“Nashville played well and I know they are performing fantastic in their league here in the MLS. We faced them, respecting them, and even when we were 2-0 they were able to claim back a result.

“They drew and, of course, they showed their capacity.

“Last year we played against Columbus Crew, this year we played against St. Louis City, here (against Nashville) and all matches we play against MLS teams – sometimes we are winning, sometimes losing and sometimes drawing. The level they have is a very good level.”

There will be a step up in opposition on our return home, with pre-season friendlies against Roma, Marseille and Villarreal to come, and the expectation is that we’ll start to see our preferred XI play the bulk of minutes to ensure that they’re ready to go against Newcastle United on August 16.

We’ve seen that gradually happen across the pond but with many changes at half-time, while there is also the hope that we’ll see reinforcements arrive in the coming weeks to help the current squad increase our level and compete across multiple fronts in the upcoming campaign.

For now though, albeit results haven’t gone our way entirely which won’t bother Emery too much, it’s been a positive pre-season thus far in terms of challenging the players with a good intensity and energy about our games, and that will hopefully continue in the next week or so to ensure everyone is at their optimal conditioning.

 

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