It is a testament to Unai Emery’s achievements at Aston Villa that the club’s supporters find themselves in a truly unique position in modern football: winless, playing poorly, in the bottom three, and not worried at all.
Neutrals are solemnly shaking their heads already, certain, four games in, that the summer exodus did indeed spell the end of an era. Villa look broken, lost, a ghost of what they were in the Europa League final.
That’s not what insiders see, although you do have to be pretty deep inside, a real Emery truther, to spot the revolution coming.
The foundation for Villa fans’ resolute optimism is simple: results are almost a mirror image of last season, when Villa won just two points from the first five Premier League games only to come fourth (their joint-highest finish this century) and win the Europa League.
That’s enough to keep them going, enough to keep repeating the catchphrase “in Emery we trust”; a quasi-religious mantra at Villa Park.
But the poor results in 2026/27 would be testing fans’ patience far more if symmetry was all they had for comfort. What keeps hope alive, beyond the unerring faith in Emery’s coaching, is a quietly excellent summer.
No, really.
The truth is that Villa needed to break up a team that had aged together and had reached the top of the mountain.
Losing Ezri Konsa was a major blow – there’s just no way to spin that one – but Ollie Watkins hadn’t been himself for the last 12 months, and neither had Emiliano Martinez nor Morgan Rogers, without doubt the two worst performers among Villa’s regular starters in 2025/26.
It was widely believed that Youri Tielemans, a first-team football regular since he was 16, would need to be moved on sooner or later, while Lucas Digne’s extremely high wages meant Villa had been open to a sale for the last two years.
Replacing all six in a single window is bold, perhaps even reckless, but the revolution had to come.
And if Villa can recover from a bad August to finish in the European places, as they did last season, there will be plaudits from all quarters that Villa managed the dreaded rebuild in one hectic summer.
And this is where we get onto the most significant reason why Villa fans believe their team remain on track, perhaps even on the precipice of even greater heights under Emery: the new signings, the vast majority of whom are yet to get started, have the potential to be a serious step up from the players sold.
Johan Manzambi, Joao Gomes, Zion Suzuki, and Ibrahim Mbaye are among the most highly-rated and sought-after young players in Europe. Each one is a coup.
Leon Goretzka provides the midfield grit Villa have long lacked, Nicolas Jackson is an all-round better striker than Watkins, and Matteo Ruggeri has the potential to replace Digne.
Add to that Alysson and Brian Madjo, January signings who have both impressed this season, the academy graduate George Hemmings, who has started all four Premier League games on the left, and Boubacar Kamara returning after 12 months out, and Villa’s squad looks superior to 2025/26.
The issue facing Villa right now is one of time and patience.
Injury has held Manzambi back and Gomes’ red card in the opener at Brighton has limited his impact, whereas the rest of the new recruits have simply been given the Emery treatment.
His tactical ideas are so specific, his demands so acute, new signings tend to need several months of schooling before they are given a chance.
The XI stumbling through matches this term is simply not the XI that will define their season. In this sense Emery remains far more in control than it might appear.
In all areas, that is, except central defence.
The Konsa loss really was a big one and Villa were not prepared for it, the deadline day capture of Taylor Harwood-Bellis seeming like a slightly panicked buy and far from a direct replacement. Harwood-Bellis is very good on the ball but prone to minor defensive errors, errors of the sort Pau Torres (as of this week, injured indefinitely) has been making without the dependable Konsa by his side.
If Villa’s campaign does not improve, if the Emery project falls apart, that will be why. Victor Lindelof and Tyrone Mings is not a centre-back partnership one would think is capable of Champions League qualification.
A lot rests on Harwood-Bellis making the step up, but if he can, Aston Villa will have completed something almost unheard of: the full-scale rebuild and glow-up in a single summer.
Inevitably that has led to a sluggish start. But it would be a mistake to confuse a slow beginning with an ending.
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