Dan Bardell explains why Tyrone Mings and John McGinn remain fundamental to Aston Villa as Unai Emery integrates a new-look squad, with their leadership, organisation and understanding of the club proving crucial during a period of major change.
Aston Villa spent the summer changing a significant part of Unai Emery's squad and much of the excitement naturally surrounds the players who have arrived, particularly after Johan Manzambi, Nicolas Jackson and Zion Suzuki all made important contributions at Tottenham, but performances like this are also a reminder that the people who already understand the football club might be more important than ever while everybody else catches up.
That applies particularly to Tyrone Mings and John McGinn because there are a lot of raw ingredients in this Villa team at the moment. There are young players, new signings and established members of the squad being asked to take on slightly different responsibilities, and while Emery will eventually establish a new hierarchy within the dressing room, I'm not convinced we've completely discovered what that looks like yet. Last season Villa had Youri Tielemans in the middle of the pitch and he had become one of Emery's lieutenants, somebody who understood exactly what the manager wanted, could organise the players around him and was capable of taking responsibility when the game became difficult.
If you look at Boubacar Kamara and João Gomes together, I'm not sure either naturally gives you that at this point. That's not a criticism of their ability because they have different qualities and different jobs within the team, while perhaps Kamara can grow into more of that role as he gets fully fit and comfortable again. Leon Goretzka could eventually provide another experienced voice when he is properly integrated as well, but while Villa are working out where that leadership comes from in the next version of Emery's team, Mings and McGinn remain absolutely fundamental.
Mings was excellent for the majority of the Tottenham game because whenever the ball came into Villa's penalty area he seemed to be there to attack it, and aside from the late set-piece goal he repelled so much of what Spurs threw towards him. What I also liked was his use of the ball because there have always been people who become nervous when Mings is asked to play out from the back, but there were moments when he could have been doing a Pau Torres impression with the quality and composure of his passing.
Victor Lindelöf alongside him was quietly effective, which is probably exactly what Villa wanted. Sometimes a centre-back giving you a steady performance where you struggle to remember a mistake or even a particularly dramatic intervention is a compliment, and his calmer style allowed Mings to be the more aggressive and dominant defender alongside him without Villa having two players trying to perform the same role.
McGinn's importance manifests itself differently and one of my favourite little moments at Tottenham actually came immediately after Jackson scored. Jackson was already on a yellow card and was understandably desperate to celebrate his first Premier League goal for Villa, but McGinn was immediately over there reminding him of the situation and making sure he didn't take his shirt off, antagonise the supporters or turn a brilliant moment into a completely unnecessary problem. It probably won't appear in any compilation of McGinn's best moments for Villa, but that is captaincy and it's exactly the sort of thing you need when you've got new players still learning about each other, the football club and what Emery demands from them.
There has been discussion about McGinn's minutes and whether he should be rotated more, and there will obviously be games where Emery manages him because of the schedule Villa face, but I'd still expect him to play an enormous amount of football because he remains one of the most important players at the club. The same applies to Mings when Villa need his particular qualities, especially during this period where there are so many moving parts around them and the team doesn't yet have the established leadership structure it possessed previously.
Over time, perhaps new leaders emerge. Maybe Goretzka provides some of it, maybe Kamara develops into a more vocal presence and Villa have seemingly been trying to encourage players such as Matty Cash and Emi Buendía to take on additional responsibility as the squad evolves, but you can't manufacture years of experience at a football club overnight. Mings and McGinn know what difficult moments at Villa look like, they know what Emery expects and, crucially, they know when something within a game needs sorting before the manager can do anything about it from the touchline.
Villa's future might increasingly belong to Manzambi, Jackson, Suzuki and the other players who have arrived as part of this latest evolution under Emery, but while that future is taking shape, Mings and McGinn remain two of the people holding the present together.
