Aston Villa had a week of potential highs turn into a week of nightmares, as Unai Emery now faces a significant battle to keep his side in the race for the top four.
After striding up the table from 15th to 7th in his first season at Aston Villa, manager Unai Emery has kept the momentum going in the 2023/24 campaign, with the Villans not showing any signs of drifting away from the top six.
The Midlands side have only lost six Premier League games out of their opening 24, an impressive feat considering that the squad had lost 11 at this point in the 2022/23 calendar.
With key players performing and trust in the manager at a high, the crash in form last week felt more fatal than just a bump along the road, with two home losses recorded in five days, and the squad’s injury report reading significantly worse.
A week to forget for Aston Villa and Unai Emery
Going into the FA Cup fourth-round replay with Chelsea last Wednesday provided an exciting prospect for Villa, the opportunity to see off a theoretically ‘big club’ and encourage another cup run.
The 3-1 defeat at Villa Park was alarming against Mauricio Pochettino’s lacklustre side, but the Villans had the chance of redemption in the Premier League four days later in welcoming Manchester United to the Midlands.
Another loss, dropping out of the top four, a fresh injury, a consecutive home defeat and the gap between 5th and 6th made narrower concluded a terrible week by Emery’s standards, matters made worse on Monday morning.
The news of Boubacar Kamara’s season-ending ACL injury was questionably worse than suffering back-to-back defeats, with the Frenchman being one of the manager’s most reliable figures in the XI.
In losing the 24-year-old, the midfield pivot of Douglas Luiz and Kamara is derailed, as is the spine of the squad and the dynamic of the Spaniard’s preferred playing style, making the outlook on the remainder of Villa’s season shift.
It will be remarkable for Unai Emery to secure Champions League football
If it was going to be impressive for Emery to power Villa into the Champions League by claiming a top-four spot, it would be even more impressive now.
Placing the recent dip in form aside, the squad’s injury list is painfully extensive, with three first-team players having suffered an ACL injury in the 2023/24 campaign.
The job that the manager has done after losing both Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia to the same injury back in August is remarkable, even more so if performance levels can continue after losing Kamara.
While Mings and Buendia’s place in the XI was important, the duo’s absence was eased in the sense of identifying a positional replacement capable of competing at the standard required to make the starting lineup.
When it comes to Kamara, journalist Jacob Tanswell described his injury as a hole that “no player can fill”, which is a fair analysis considering the Frenchman’s highly-praised partnership with Luiz.
What is needed now is for Emery to show just how far he can adapt his squad to overcome three ACL injuries in a single campaign, making the prospect of securing Champions League football something of a miracle.
The manager has rightly received a host of commendations for his work at Villa Park so far, with the opportunity now there for the former Arsenal boss to show just how good he is after another injury blow.
When separating the elite managers from the good, the theme of adaptability is the swaying factor, how can one keep momentum when times are tough?
If Emery is to secure a top-four finish in a race with Manchester United and Spurs, as well as juggling the UEFA Europa Conference League, the Spaniard will surely have a shout to claim manager of the season.
