Martin Laursen Exclusive Part 1: How Martin O’Neill unlocked the best years of my Aston Villa career

There are certain Aston Villa players whose time at the club was relatively short but whose connection with the supporters has endured far beyond the number of appearances they actually made, and Martin Laursen undoubtedly belongs in that category. The former Villa captain spent five years in claret and blue after arriving from AC Milan in 2004, although injuries meant that for much of the first half of his Villa career supporters only saw glimpses of the defender he could be. Eventually, though, Laursen got himself fit, became one of the outstanding centre-backs in the Premier League, captained the club and established a relationship with the Villa supporters that remains remarkably strong nearly two decades later.

Laursen returned to the Midlands recently for an event with RPG Promotions and sat down with me beforehand to look back properly at his Villa career, including those difficult early years, the rehabilitation work that finally allowed him to show his class and the role Martin O’Neill played in getting the very best out of him.

For somebody who does not return to Birmingham particularly often, being back clearly still means something. “It’s a very special occasion for me to come back,” Laursen said. “I have to admit that I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. It’s with great pleasure that I’m here. First of all, I would say I have great memories from here. When I’ve said that, I also remember the first three years I had here where I struggled with a knee injury and it was hard. But after that period, the last two seasons I had were the best two seasons of my playing career. I played some of my best football here and my connection with the Villa fans and everybody around here is great. I hold Aston Villa very close to my heart.”

Laursen joined Villa from AC Milan following Euro 2004, arriving with an impressive pedigree and having just enjoyed an excellent tournament with Denmark, but also knowing that the Premier League was somewhere he wanted to test himself. Villa Park immediately appealed to him and even reminded him of Parken, Denmark’s national stadium, while his early impressions of then-manager David O’Leary were positive. “I knew a bit about the Premier League, that the tempo was high. I was a bit surprised, even though I knew the tempo was so high. But I had a great impression to begin with. I came to watch Villa Park and it was pretty much like Parken in Denmark where we play our national team matches. I really wanted to go to England, to the Premier League, and Aston Villa was perfect for me. I had a good impression of David O’Leary as well, who was the manager at that time. Everything was really good. But again, I have to come back to how I struggled a bit with injuries. The start wasn’t exactly as I hoped it would be.”

His Villa debut came at home to Southampton, a 2-0 victory and, appropriately enough for a player who would eventually become synonymous with commanding defending at Villa Park, a clean sheet. The problem was turning that promising beginning into any sort of sustained run in the side. Laursen had arrived from one of the biggest clubs in European football having just performed impressively for his country and understandably wanted to establish himself immediately, which only increased the frustration when his body would not allow him to do it. “Very hard,” he said when asked how difficult that period became. “Because first of all, I think there were great expectations towards me. I came from AC Milan. I had just played a really good European Championship with Denmark. So I really wanted it to be well from day one. Obviously it was hard for me to accept that I struggled with injuries in the beginning. But that was how it was, that’s life. I couldn’t do anything about that. I was just working towards it to be good. Luckily, it was good at the end.”

Good probably understates what eventually followed because, during the 2007/08 season, Laursen played every Premier League game, scored six league goals and became one of the most important players in a Villa team beginning to establish itself towards the top end of the division. After everything that had preceded it, simply being available every week meant almost as much to him as the level of his performances. “I played all matches that season, so that was also a very nice thing for me, to be regularly playing football week in, week out. I hadn’t been doing that for a long time. So that was important. Then obviously that I played well, that was nice as well. But just the fact that I was playing all the time, that was important for me.”

The transformation followed a lengthy rehabilitation programme away from Villa after Laursen was sent to Bologna for nine months to work on his knee. By the time he returned, he was not only physically in a far better place but also understood much more about English football and how perfectly his own attributes could fit it. “I had a really big knee injury where I had to leave Aston Villa. I had to go to Bologna to do my rehab. I was there for nine months and I worked hard there. I came back fit, really fit, and had no problems with my knee. So physically I felt really good. Then I knew about the English way to play football and that helped me a bit as well. But most of all I was just physically really fit, because the way I was playing football was perfect for the Premier League. I was very physical, liked to tackle, win headers and all that. The technical part was not where I was best, but that was not what you expected of a centre-half here in England. So that suited me well.”

There was another important factor in Laursen finally being able to produce his best football consistently. By then O’Neill was Villa manager and, rather than demanding his centre-half follow exactly the same training programme as everybody else, he recognised what was required to get him onto the pitch every weekend. Laursen could not put his knee through five normal days of training and then expect it to withstand a Premier League game, so O’Neill effectively gave him the freedom to manage his own body. “I had Martin O’Neill as a manager and we had a really good relationship. I couldn’t train as much as the others during the week and he was fine with that. I had my own programme. He basically said that what you do from Monday to Friday, Martin, it’s not like I don’t care, but almost. As long as you are fit for the weekend and obviously play well, then whatever you need to do during the week, you manage that. That was really important for me because I couldn’t train normally like the others every day. That would have been too hard for my knee. I had to do some special training, some special rehab during the week to be able to play matches.”

O’Neill was renowned for giving his players time away from the training ground, particularly around international breaks, although Laursen explained that his own arrangement was slightly different. He was often away with Denmark during those periods anyway and the important part for him was how his workload was managed during a normal run of club fixtures, when there would be days between Monday and Friday devoted to the specialist work his knee required rather than simply following the rest of the squad.

It inevitably brings to mind another iconic Villa number five because Paul McGrath famously managed his body through the week in order to be available when the games came around, and Laursen was aware during his time at the club that people could see similarities between the two situations. He is understandably proud to be mentioned anywhere near McGrath, although he laughs at the suggestion that their weekly routines were completely identical. “Yes, I heard about that. There are some similarities, obviously, because I only trained a couple of times a week to be able to play matches. I think that was a little bit better than what he did during the week! But yes, there were some similarities between him and me. Obviously, I’m very proud to hear that because he’s a real legend. If someone compares me to him, then that makes me happy.”

The Villa side O’Neill assembled around Laursen remains one of the most fondly remembered of the club’s Premier League era, ultimately producing three successive sixth-place finishes, and what stands out looking back is how clearly the players fitted the football the manager wanted to play. There was devastating pace from Gabriel Agbonlahor and Ashley Young, power through John Carew, experience and quality in midfield from Stiliyan Petrov and Gareth Barry and established defenders behind them. “Martin O’Neill was very good at finding the right players for the kind of football that he wanted to play. We had Agbonlahor and Ashley Young on each side as wingers, and a big, strong striker, John Carew mainly. Then some experienced midfielders, Stiliyan Petrov, Gareth Barry, and some experienced defenders as well. His way of playing and the way he wanted to take his players into Aston Villa, he was really thinking about that. That made him really successful, Martin O’Neill. He really had a way to play that we understood and it worked out really well. Looking back, we had some really, really strong names, some good players in that squad. So that was also the reason why we did really good.”

Young in particular had an enormous influence on Laursen’s remarkable goalscoring record. His set-piece delivery gave Villa an obvious weapon and Laursen reached a stage where he genuinely expected to threaten the opposition goal whenever his team-mate stood over a dead ball, but there was also a change in his own mentality. Earlier in his career, his instinct had sometimes been to begin thinking about getting back into his defensive position before the attacking phase had properly finished; by this stage, he was committing completely to trying to score. “When you have a player as good as him, free-kicks, corner kicks, well, just in the game as well, during the game to make crosses, you believe a little bit more. You believe a little bit more. Obviously, I really believed that I had a chance to score every time I went up and he had the free-kick or whatever he had. Then I really did everything that I could to be able to score a goal. That was the main thing, because I think I hadn’t scored that many goals before in my career because I was almost thinking about running back before the action was over. So in the late stages of my career, I was more aware of putting everything in to score a goal. Before, I was thinking a little bit too much about running back. But obviously, I had some good crosses from Ashley Young as well.”

What Laursen certainly did not envisage was Young eventually becoming a defender himself. “No, I didn’t see that. He’s a good full-back as well. He played really well in that position for Manchester United, but no, I thought he was going to be an offensive player his whole career.”

Another enduring Villa favourite from that period was Olof Mellberg and it is easy with hindsight to imagine Mellberg and Laursen spending years alongside one another at centre-back, although O’Neill frequently used the Swede at right-back. What Laursen remembers above everything else is an extraordinary competitor who could turn virtually anything into something that had to be won. “He is a real winner. I mean, he doesn’t accept to lose and he wants to win in everything that he does. When we played cards, he wanted to win. In training, he wanted to win. Obviously, everyone could see that in the matches he wanted to win. He was a real leader and a great captain for Aston Villa, but also for his country, Sweden. He’d been a captain for many years there. He was here seven years, I think, and played week in, week out. Never had an injury, more or less. So obviously, a big, big player for Aston Villa.”

Gareth Barry was another whose consistency left a lasting impression on Laursen, not simply because of his technical quality but because he combined it with an enormous amount of work and remarkable availability. “A lot of quality, but also quantity. I mean, he had so much quality in his game but worked so hard as well. Again, like Olof, never injured. Never missed a training session and obviously never missed a match. He was playing so well all the time. You could rely on him in every match. Big, big player. And it turned out that, like with James Milner, he had a massive career.”

Barry’s attempted move to Liverpool in the summer of 2008 created an unusual situation around the Villa captaincy because, despite him eventually remaining at the club, Laursen began the following season wearing the armband. The remarkable part is that nobody particularly sat him down and made a grand announcement about it; O’Neill had used different captains during pre-season, including Nigel Reo-Coker and Laursen, and when the competitive football started it was simply the Dane who had the armband. “I didn’t even know before the first game of the season that I was the captain. It just went like that, because I remember we had a few captains in the pre-season. Nigel Reo-Coker was captain for some games. I was the captain. So I don’t think it was that important for Martin O’Neill to point out, like, ‘You’re the captain.’ It was just like that when we started the season that I was the captain. I was very happy with that. It made me really proud. It was a thing that I hadn’t done before in my career, to be a captain for a club. I’ve always tried to behave as a captain, but never physically wearing the armband. So that made me really proud and I enjoyed that moment a lot.”

Unfortunately, the captaincy would ultimately prove much shorter than anybody could have imagined, but before injury intervened Laursen was able to experience one of the great individual moments of his Villa career. Villa had been away from meaningful European football for too long when Ajax arrived at Villa Park for the UEFA Cup group game in October 2008, with Marco van Basten in charge of the Dutch side, and Laursen scored the opening goal in front of the Holte End. The image of him celebrating with the captain’s armband remains one of the defining photographs of his time at the club and the significance of the night was not lost on the players.

“That was why it was so special, because we were all aware that it had been many years since we played international football at Villa Park. Against Ajax, I think Marco van Basten was the manager. So it was a big, big match. I scored the first goal in front of the Holte End. It’s the thing you dream about, but you don’t really believe in it. So that’s also a thing that makes me really proud to this day and the thing that I will never, ever forget.”

It is easy now to look back at that moment as the image of Laursen at his Villa peak: captain of the club, finally fit after everything he had been through, scoring in front of the Holte End on a European night and playing in a side that increasingly believed it could go somewhere Villa had not been in the Premier League era. The frustration, of course, is that just as Laursen and Villa appeared to have everything moving in the right direction, his knee was about to intervene again.

What followed left one of the great unanswered questions of that Villa era.