Unai Emery’s Aston Villa were the surprise package of the Premier League last season, finishing fourth and qualifying for the Champions League. With those results, expectations of course have gone up as well and the Villans are making bold moves in the transfer market.
They have moved quickly, replacing Douglas Luiz with Amadou Onana and bringing in the likes of Ian Maatsen, Ross Barkley and Jaden Philogene. The transfer activity is a clear sign of intent but Liverpool icon John Barnes warns that expectations should be tempered.
No guarantee that Aston Villa can repeat their performance from last season
Unai Emery has made quality additions to his side but Barnes warns that it does not guarantee that they’ll repeat last season’s performance. He further adds that Villa will face stiffer competition for the fourth spot from the likes of Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea and Newcastle.
“Well you talk about maintaining, you’re talking about challenging for fourth place aren’t you.I think they can challenge for fourth but of course Man United will come back, Tottenham will come back, Liverpool will be there or thereabouts, Chelsea and Newcastle. There’s no guarantee that they’re going to finish fourth because they maximised their potential last season and it’ll be tough to achieve again.
“So they will still be challenging for that with the players they have and adding Ian Maatsen, Amadou Onana, Jaden Philogene, Enzo Barrenechea and Ross Barkley will solidify their their consistency in terms of saying that yes, we should be looking to be that fourth or third position.”
Joao Felix will only succeed if he has hard working players around him
With Moussa Diaby leaving for Al-Ittihad, Aston Villa have also been strongly linked with a move for Joao Felix. Barnes praised Felix’s technical capabilities but added that he’ll only thrive if he has hard-working players around him. He cited his failed spell at Chelsea as an example.
“Well, it depends on the rest of the team, because Joao Felix is a player who’s very, very technical and very good. But if all you have is technical players it’ll be tough. This is why he never worked at Chelsea and even for Portugal, because you’ve got lots of technical players.
“If you have lots of hard working players around him then he gives you that extra bit of quality. Yes, it can work and if you look at the players that they’ve trusted and they’ve signed, they could complement each other because you have to complement each other with styles.
“From a creativity point of view, he can give me that creativity. He’ll play very well with Ollie Watkins, but as I said you’ll have to have hard workers around him. So it really depends on the balance of the team. But I think in the right team, he could be a very good signing for sure.”
