Aston Villa boss Unai Emery is pleased with his current midfield options after adding Amadou Onana to his squad this summer, while he reiterated his belief in Enzo Barrenechea’s potential too.
Amid PSR concerns earlier this summer, Villa made the difficult decision to sell Douglas Luiz, while Tim Iroegbunam also departed as we went through a rebuilding process of Emery’s midfield.
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That process started last year with the acquisition of Youri Tielemans, but it became a more significant priority this past summer with Ross Barkley and Amadou Onana arriving as further reinforcements to fill the voids left behind.
Coupled with Boubacar Kamara returning from a long-term injury and the ability of John McGinn to drop back and play deeper if required, Villa appear to have strong competition and depth in that department now, and importantly, have options that suit Emery’s preferred style of play and principles of maintaining control of possession and tempo in both phases.
The partnership between our Belgian pairing of Onana and Tielemans has been a real highlight through the first three games of the Premier League campaign, but with the Champions League getting underway next week coupled with the desire to do well in the domestic cups, we’ll certainly need that depth as the year progresses.
Emery has insisted that he’s happy with what he has at his disposal having added quality options in each position, and he is confident that any combination of those players available to him will work, be it in a deeper midfield pivot or as part of a three-man midfield when necessary.
“We signed Amadou Onana because he is young and has big potential,” he told Sky Sports. “We believe in his potential.
“The gap is at the beginning big, bigger than we analysed. But we are confident to increase his level in this gap to get to the level where we can think of him as a very good player in the future. He is [already] a very good player but we think he can improve and get to a high level as a player and help us a lot in this way.
“We added two players with the similar characteristics to Douglas. Youri Tielemans last year and Ross Barkley this year. We want two similar players in each position or players with the versatility to play different positions. They can play together, Kamara and Onana. If we were thinking he could not play with Kamara, maybe it would not have been very easy to sign him.
“But we are thinking with Kamara, with Ama, with Barkley and with Tielemans, they can play [in any combination of] two players or we could even play with three of them together in our structure that we have.”
Meanwhile, he was keen not to forget to include Barrenechea in the discussion, with the 23-year-old on loan at Valencia this season as he looks to gain more valuable experience at a high level to develop his all-round game, following his arrival from Juventus in July.
Particularly with Kamara returning from injury, it was going to be highly unlikely that the Argentine midfielder would get many opportunities this season, and so as a short-term fix. a season-long loan makes sense. However, it will be fascinating to see if he can force his way into Emery’s plans from next summer onwards, but the Basque coach evidently believes he can become an important part of his squad in the future as he evidently signed him for a reason.
“Of course, we signed Enzo Barrenechea as well,” he added. “He is a young player who could develop well himself, improving and becoming important for us. We decided to let him to go on loan and in the future we want to add him and for him to join us, playing in our structure as well as an important player.”
That will give Villa more competition and depth, but as we look to try and compete on multiple fronts year in and year out, coupled with how we saw injuries and suspensions damage our ambitions last season, it’s imperative that we keep the right balance in the squad and hopefully Emery has put in long-term pillars of our midfield to continue to improve us and take us forward.
