Dan Bardell looks at how Aston Villa's summer rebuild has changed the profile of Unai Emery's squad, with more pace, power and athleticism giving the manager different options after a window of significant change at Villa Park.
One of the things I wanted Aston Villa to address this summer was the athletic profile of the squad because, as good as Villa were last season and as much as they achieved, there were times when I felt we lacked pace and could become a little one-paced in the way we attacked teams.
It is important to put that into context because Villa finished fourth and won the Europa League, so this wasn't a team that required ripping apart completely — even though it got ripped apart — or a style of football that wasn't working, but whenever you refresh a squad you have to look at what you can add rather than simply trying to recreate what you have lost. Villa have lost some outstanding footballers this summer and I don't think we can properly judge whether they are better or worse for those changes until we have seen this team play together for a considerable period of time, but what I do think is already clear is that the profile has changed.
And that's exciting, whatever you feel about any of the departures.
This summer seems to have been about Villa wanting to become bigger, fitter, faster and stronger, and when you look at the business they have eventually done, I think you can see quite a lot of evidence of that thinking.
Nicolas Jackson immediately changes things at centre-forward because he has real pace and gives Villa the ability to stretch teams in a slightly different way to Ollie Watkins. That isn't me saying he is automatically an upgrade on Watkins because there were things Ollie did brilliantly that Jackson will have to prove he can replicate, but there are also things Jackson can give this team that Watkins couldn't, and the players around him will now have to learn the runs he makes and where he wants the ball delivered.
There has been a similar change in the wide areas. Villa have added players who can run at defenders and carry a threat in behind, which is something I felt the team needed more of, and Ibrahim Mbaye is probably the most exciting example of that. We haven't seen him in a Villa shirt yet and there will inevitably be a period of adaptation for a young player arriving from France, so expectations need to be reasonable, but you don't spend the sort of money Villa have spent on him without believing there is some serious quality there.
Alejandro Garnacho provides another direct option, while Ian Maatsen becoming the first-choice left-back adds even more speed down that side. We saw something interesting against Arsenal when Garnacho stayed high and wide and Maatsen started moving into the inside positions that would previously have been occupied by somebody like Morgan Rogers or Emi Buendia when they played from the left, and that is the sort of variety I think this squad could eventually have more of.
João Gomes changes the physical profile of the midfield as well. Youri Tielemans was a fantastic player for Villa and replacing his quality isn't straightforward, but Gomes gets around the pitch differently and brings another level of energy and mobility. Leon Goretzka adds size, experience and physicality on top of that, and once all of these players are available to Emery, Villa should have considerably more ways of setting up depending on the opposition and the type of game they expect.
The one area where I still want to see how the squad develops is aerially because Amadou Onana has been a huge loss in that respect.
Onana gave Villa a presence at both ends of the pitch that isn't particularly easy to replace. He could attack the ball from set pieces, defend his own penalty area and give Villa that extra bit of security when teams wanted to put crosses into the box, and I don't think we have another player currently available who quite provides what he does in those situations.
Goretzka could certainly help, while Taylor Harwood-Bellis should also add more aerial presence at centre-back and Dave Reed from Sky Sports News mentioned that Southampton supporters he has spoken to rate him highly in that area, so perhaps the answer is spread across two or three of the new additions rather than expecting one player to replace everything Onana provides.
It will also be interesting to see what Villa do from their own set pieces because that was such a strength last season. Villa took more short corners than anybody else in the Premier League and were very good at manufacturing different situations from them rather than simply putting the ball into the penalty area and hoping somebody won the first contact, whereas they now have a new set-piece coach who will inevitably approach certain things differently.
Against Arsenal there seemed to be more emphasis on delivering into the six-yard box and Arsenal were largely comfortable dealing with it, although it is very early days for a new set-piece coach who is still learning the strengths of the players he has inherited, several of whom have only just arrived.
That is probably the wider point with this Villa squad as well because we can look at the individual signings and identify what they should bring, but Emery now has to turn those different attributes into a functioning team. There are hardly any established relationships across the pitch because so many important players have left and so many new ones have arrived, and that understanding only comes with time.
What does encourage and intrigue me is that Villa haven't simply gone out and tried to buy replicas of the players they have sold.
There appears to have been a conscious attempt to change the make-up of the team, add more pace and athleticism and give Emery different ways of hurting opponents. Jackson is different to Watkins, the wide players bring genuine speed, Maatsen changes what Villa can do from left-back, Gomes brings mobility in midfield and Goretzka gives the squad another physical presence.
Whether that ultimately makes Aston Villa a better team remains to be seen, and after losing the quality we have lost this summer I think it would be premature to make that claim now, but I do think Villa have addressed an area where there was room to improve.
They look quicker, they should become more athletic and, perhaps most importantly, they look like they have been built to give Emery more variety.
Now we get to see what he does with it.
