Aston Villa’s President of Football Operations, Monchi, has given an in-depth interview with the club discussing various key topics.
The Spaniard arrived this past summer to become an influential figure in our sporting plans moving forward, and formed part of an important reshuffle to the management infrastructure at the club overseen by owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens.
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Given his previous work at Sevilla, he has built a reputation as being one of the best in a sporting director role, and he of course has also worked with Unai Emery before, with the pair developing a close relationship.
In turn, he will hopefully play a vital role in our ongoing pursuit of success on and off the pitch in the coming years, and his impact would have been felt over the summer transfer window having started work in July.
Monchi has now spoken about his initial months in the role, what it was that attracted him to be part of the project at Villa moving forward and how Emery’s presence at the club was a key factor in his decision.
“The feelings of these first few months have been magnificent,” he told the club’s official site. “The adaptation to a new city, new club, new team-mates has all been very quick and easy since everyone has tried to facilitate in this initial period. I must thank all the people who work with the first team for their help and support.”
“The present and future project offered by Aston Villa was key in my decision.
“My initial idea was to rest for a while after finishing my time with Sevilla FC, but when the possibility of Aston Villa arose, I didn’t hesitate for a moment because from everything I heard from both Unai and Damian as well as Nassef and Wes, this quickly generated a lot of excitement in me.
“Obviously, the presence of Unai has been almost the decisive reason to come to Birmingham. He is currently one of the top-level coaches in the world of football, with an infinite capacity to work and an eagerness to continue growing.”
It was a busy summer for Villa with a number of exits being approved, while we added five new players to the squad in Youri Tielemans, Pau Torres, Moussa Diaby, Nicolo Zaniolo and Clement Lenglet.
While it feels as though the squad is now stronger as Emery continues to mould it into his own, we did make the decision to sell a number of our top young talents, with Cameron Archer, Jaden Philogene and Aaron Ramsey moving on.
Monchi has confirmed that those decisions were taken with FFP in mind, but he adds that with buy-back clauses included in some of those agreements, we still have a degree of control over whether or not those youngsters return further down the line.
“It has been a very complicated and hard-working summer, but I think we should be satisfied with what we have done, as we have kept all the important players plus the arrival of the five,” he added.
“The sales have basically been to balance our FFP, but in most cases we have repurchase options, so I think we have covered our backs. I am happy with the work we have done, and I want to congratulate all the people involved.”
Time will ultimately tell if the decisions made have put us in a stronger position to compete at the top level and for silverware this season, but evidently there is short-term and long-term planning in place to try and get to where we want to be.
There is significant excitement over where Emery can lead us given the work he has done since he arrived last year, and with the infrastructure in place around him to provide support for his plans moving forward, Villa look to be in a good place both from a sporting and business perspective.
It remains to be seen if our dealings over the summer have now provided more room for manoeuvre to strengthen in January and particularly next summer, but despite two significant injury blows to Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia that we suffered at the start of the campaign, it’s hoped that we’ve got enough to see real progress again this year.
