Aston Villa captain John McGinn has provided some fascinating insight into Unai Emery’s influence on the squad’s mentality.
Since his appointment in October 2022, Villa have been on an incredible trajectory of progress and development as Emery has transformed the club and built a winning and enjoyable culture on and off the pitch.
READ MORE: How Villa could line up vs Liverpool: Hope of key injury boosts
With potential Champions League qualification for next season coupled with a run to the semi-finals of the Europa Conference League, Villa are continuing to improve and evolve, and that starts with the impact and influence that the Basque coach has on his players.
We’ve seen the individual and collective improvement on the pitch, but we perhaps don’t hear too much about what Emery is like behind the scenes and how he imparts wisdom and builds a mentality with his players.
Our exit from Europe will no doubt have disappointed and frustrated him as Emery is a winner, but as he’s said on countless occasions to the media in the past, he wants to demand more from his players and achieve bigger objectives during his time at Villa, and this is just the beginning.
That’s the message that McGinn conveys in his latest comments, as he touched on Emery’s desire to win and improve, and also how he refuses to allow anyone to use our injury troubles as an excuse this season.
“I think everyone knows what we think of our manager,” he said, as per BirminghamLive.”We are very lucky to have him and his staff. They work endlessly to make the improvements to make us better.
“Even before Thursday’s game, he was treating it the same way he did the first pre-season game. It is just the way he is. He is a workaholic who is desperate for success. We would love him to be here for many years.
“I have three years left here, at the moment. He has three years left himself so hopefully he can be here for many years to come. But he wants success and does not want to stop short at semi-finals or fourth place. He wants more than that. That is the sort of manager you want to play under.
“You can make excuses about X, Y or Z being injured. But the manager has driven into us there is a no excuse mentality. We had enough out there to turn the tie around and we fully believed it. It just wasn’t our night.
“There are obviously massive improvements needed moving forward to try and compete and succeed at this level.”
Time will tell if Villa can secure a win over Liverpool on Monday night to seal fourth place, but it promises to be another important summer as we try to improve and strengthen the squad to be able to compete at the next level.
Given we’ve been without Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia all season, while Boubacar Kamara and Jacob Ramsey have missed a hugely important part of it and other influential players have missed time at various points, the priority will be just to get everyone back healthy and fully fit.
That has impacted those who have avoided injuries too, as they’ve taken on a heavy workload after an already gruelling season, and it’s certainly showing in our more recent performances.
If we can manage that next year though, it will undoubtedly make a big difference to our consistency and durability, but as McGinn notes above, there is no time for excuses or feeling sorry for ourselves as Emery won’t allow it. Instead, his focus is on winning the next game, building a mentality, a culture and a way of playing that breeds success for a long time to come.
