After weeks of speculation, Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has finally got his man as a reunion with Pau Torres was confirmed on Wednesday.
As per the club’s statement, Torres has been unveiled after his move from Villarreal was completed, and he joins Youri Tielemans in arriving as one of our marquee summer signings.
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With Villa preparing for what we hope will be a deep run in Europe as well as competing in domestic cup competitions and trying to build on our seventh-place finish in the Premier League last season, we now need to build a squad capable of challenging on multiple fronts and performing at a high level week in and week out.
To do that, we need top-level competition, and as Emery has consistently promised since he arrived, we will only sign players who he believes significantly improve what we already have available.
Given his experience, pedigree and obvious quality, Torres ticks so many of the right boxes, and at 26 years of age, he’ll be entering the peak years of his career where we hope he’ll play a pivotal role in our success.
Pau Torres a tactical, technical dream for Emery
“Pau Torres is an amazing player, I think he’s a top player,” Emery said of Torres in March 2021 as per Football.London. “I’ve been a coach in Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal and I’ve never seen a centre back like Pau Torres.
“I think he’s going to play at the highest level, he’s playing now in the national team but he can play in the top teams in Europe very soon.”
The Villa boss knows him well of course after their stint together at Villarreal, where the Spanish international continued to develop and improve into one of the top centre-halves in Europe.
His defensive qualities and attributes will hopefully solidify our backline further and make us a more difficult side to break down and through, but it’s what Torres adds in possession on top of that which makes him such an important signing.
He boasts an elite level of composure, vision and technical ability on the ball for a defender, and with Emery looking to build out from the back with controlled and patient possession-based football, Torres will fit in perfectly as we try to nullify the opposition’s threat by dominating the ball.
Torres made the most accurate passes of any defender in La Liga last season with 1846, and while the obvious caveat is for a defender not every single pass played would have been a defence-splitting effort, it’s a gauge of his exceptional ability to retain possession and play a vital part in Emery’s preferred style.
What does it mean for Tyrone Mings and the rest of the defence? It means as with any club trying to compete at the very top for silverware, there is fierce competition for every place in the squad. The owners, management staff and Emery all share a vision of Villa challenging the elite in the coming years, so we need to act like a club looking to do exactly that.
It’s not necessarily the case that Mings, Ezri Konsa or Diego Carlos could suffer either. Given we hope to play in excess of 50 games next season, rotation will be key. Further, Emery’s tactical genius will likely allow for all four to play prominent roles over the course of the campaign, and perhaps even together.
Konsa has shown an ability to play at right-back, so shifting into a back three in possession to allow Alex Moreno to bomb forward down the left flank will likely be a prominent part of our shape and style. Torres adds another hugely impressive string to our bow, and his influence both on and off the ball will be significant moving forward as Villa’s four centre-half options are now as good as they have been in a long, long time.
