It may seem a mischievous piece of scheduling, or a painful reminder of what Aston Villa briefly tasted. Eleven months ago, they also faced Bologna in European competition. But then victory took them top of the Champions League and if the table was in nascent stage rather than an accurate reflection of the continental pecking order, Villa could nevertheless cherish it.
Now they meet again in the Europa League. If the opponents are familiar, the soundtrack will be, too: Villa mistakenly played the Europa League anthem before their Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain. Which, while they beat the competition’s eventual winners on the night and gave them an almighty scare, now has the look of an inflection point. The other was the May defeat at Old Trafford, costing Villa an immediate return to the Champions League. With every week, it feels like Villa have not recovered from either, an entire club sinking into a sulk at what they have lost.
The departure of Monchi, the president of football operations and ally of Unai Emery, compounds an underwhelming start to the season and frustrating summer in the transfer market. The Spaniard was the recruitment guru but after years of frantic and creative trading, Villa were the second lowest spenders this summer and among the lowest sellers.
It was only one of several indications that the methods that had propelled them forward had stopped working. Nine of the starting 11 against Sunderland on Sunday were at the club under Steven Gerrard. Emery accused his team that day of being lazy; perhaps a lethargy reflected their age. With players from the past, Villa have had the second oldest average starting 11 in the Premier League.
They can, and do, blame the Premier League for that. Ezri Konsa said earlier this month that PSR had “really killed” Villa by restricting their spending. There can be choruses against the league at Villa Park. The inconvenient reality, however, is that Uefa, and not the Premier League, fined Villa: some £9.5m for breaching squad cost control by spending more than 80 per cent of their income on wages.
It can be interpreted as penalising clubs with ambition who lack the turnover of the established order, or protecting them from the dangers of overspending. There was a romance to Villa’s return to the Champions League last season, to the win over Bayern Munich, to the spectacular comeback against PSG. But, by some markers, it was fashioned by unaffordable means.
Now Villa’s squad is markedly inferior to the group Emery had for their last continental clash. Because, in part, they gambled so much to get Champions League football again. The loanees Marco Asensio and Marcus Rashford’s considerable wages were part of an attempt to establish them in the elite; but their arrivals showed the confused thinking of paying £25m for Donyell Malen and then omitting him from the Champions League squad. Now Malen remains but Rashford and Asensio are gone.
Without them – and the sold Jacob Ramsey and the loaned-out Leon Bailey – Villa have lost much of their threat, particularly on the flanks, where they have often lacked pace and invention. With Ollie Watkins both out of sorts and starved of service to such an extent that he has only had two shots on target in the top flight, Villa were the last club in England’s top seven tiers to score a league goal this season; even that came from a right-back, Matty Cash, and required a goalkeeping error from Sunderland’s Robin Roefs.
Their only other goal came from the loanee Harvey Elliott in the Carabao Cup at Brentford. That was not in a victorious cause, either, with Villa still winless. Elliott, who will become a £35m buy, could become a triumph from their quiet window. But there is little pretence the late loan deal for Jadon Sancho is ideal for either him or them; once again, Villa are paying huge wages.
That Ramsey, the local who scored in their first European Cup win for four decades, had to be sacrificed and sold underlines the price Villa have paid for past spending. Their various PSR signings – Lewis Dobbin, Samuel Iling-Junior, Enzo Barrenechea – are out on loan and have provided no benefit to the team. They have paid over the odds for signings such as Ian Maatsen and Amadou Onana. They had profited in the past from Saudi Arabia, from selling Jhon Duran and Moussa Diaby, but Monchi seemed to run out of exit routes for players this summer. Emi Martinez was trapped at Villa Park.
That sense of discontent has been apparent in results and attitude. Villa have lost their feelgood factor. It is tempting to wonder if last season, topping the Champions League, scaring PSG, marked the height of the Emery project, if Monchi’s exit proves the beginning of the end.
Under other circumstances, Villa might eye up the chance of continental glory. Emery won the Europa League four times. It is a sign of the English clubs’ resources that Tottenham won the competition last season while finishing 17th in the Premier League. Villa could be the favourites. But not, surely, when they feel shrouded in such gloom.
