Aston Villa season review: From despair to delight as European return secured
Villa’s season ended with optimism levels throughout the club at their highest for 15 years.
Not since Martin O’Neill’s 2007-08 team scored 71 goals en route to a sixth-placed finish has the future looked more exciting.
Where, in a campaign which stretched out 10 months with the World Cup in the middle, did Villa go so right?
Successes
Unai Emery’s appointment was clearly the season’s key moment.
Villa’s hierarchy were confident they had pulled off something of a coup by convincing the four-time Europa League winner to succeed Steven Gerrard, less than 96 hours after the latter had been sacked.
But no-one could have predicted just how well Emery’s first seven months at the helm would pan out.
Perhaps most remarkable was the transformation appeared to happen almost overnight. After claiming a first Premier League home win over Manchester United since 1995 in Emery’s first match in charge, Villa rarely looked back. The threat of relegation, which loomed so large upon his arrival, was banished by mid-January. Their form over his 25 league matches at the helm was that of a top-four team.
In the space of seven months, Emery has changed perceptions of what might be possible at Villa.
He’s also altered the outlook for a host of players. Not least Douglas Luiz, who went from long-term enigma to a deserving winner of both the players’ and supporters’ player of the season awards. The club’s decision to rebuff three deadline day bids from Arsenal last September and then convince the Brazilian to sign a new contract a few weeks later (when Gerrard was still in charge) goes down as another big call got right.
