Aston Villa have refreshed their squad by recruiting a host of young, exciting players this summer. With those signings, the future looks extremely bright at Villa Park.
There’s a pattern to Aston Villa’s recent transfer business.
It’s not as if their squad was too old. They had the fifth-highest average age of their starting XIs of the 20 Premier League teams in 2023-24, and managed to have an extremely successful season. Villa achieved their highest finish in 28 years, and in doing so qualified for the Champions League for the first time.
But manager Unai Emery and (what surely must be one of the world’s only) president of football operations Monchi have been working hard to improve the squad in the transfer window… almost exclusively with players in their early 20s.
Aside from bringing the 30-year-old Ross Barkley back to Villa Park, Enzo Barrenechea, who only turned 23 at the end of last season, is the oldest of their seven other signings. Amadou Onana (22), Ian Maatsen (22), Cameron Archer (22), Jaden Philogene (22), Samuel Iling-Junior (20) and Lewis Dobbin (21) have also arrived at the club, while there is a possibility that 18-year-old Kosta Nedeljkovic, who joined in January but went back to Red Star Belgrade on loan for the rest of the season, is involved with the first-team squad this season.
The other players Villa signed during the winter window were then-21-year-old Morgan Rogers, teenager Lino Sousa, and a 23-year-old back-up goalkeeper in Joe Gauci. Work is being done to reduce the age profile of the squad.
With an average age of 27 years and 149 days last season, only four teams fielded older teams than Villa. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself – champions Manchester City had starting lineups with an average age only 113 days younger than Villa’s, and they did alright for themselves – but it does require a degree of self-awareness to field more older players than most other teams.
Important first-team players Lucas Digne and Diego Carlos are both over 30, while John McGinn turns 30 in October. Most of their players who played most last season are in their peak years, which is obviously a good thing for the here and now – it’s part of why Villa did so well last season – but there arguably wasn’t enough hope for the future in the squad. Emery gave only 658 minutes of Premier League action to players aged under 21, and all but 38 of those minutes were given to Tim Iroegbunam, who has now moved to Everton, and Jhon Durán, who appears to be doing everything he can to force a transfer out of the club.
The club has clearly decided that youth should be the name of the game in the transfer market.
But they also want players who can play straight away. In the cases of Onana (£50m) and Maatsen (£37.5m), that has meant paying big money, but their arrivals mean Villa have got two players who will go straight into, or at least challenge to play, in the first team.
Onana adds ball-winning ability to midfield, having averaged 3.1 tackles per 90 last season – the sixth-most of Premier League midfielders to play at least 2,000 minutes – as well as aerial presence and plenty of ability on the ball.
Maatsen is more of a modern-day left-back than Digne, preferring to play it short than get up and down the touchline and whip balls into the box, so he provides a proper alternative on that front. Maatsen maintained a pass success rate of 89.4% in the Bundesliga on loan from Chelsea to Borussia Dortmund last season, while attempting just 1.7 open-play crosses per 90. Digne, for comparison, completed 81.4% of his passes in the Premier League last season and put in 4.6 open-play crosses per 90.
Elsewhere, Villa have done cheaper business for players who likely won’t go straight into the team, but should put pressure on those in the side with the view to eventually succeeding them.
The re-signings of Archer and Philogene raised a few eyebrows but they essentially just went out on loan for a year and have now returned to the club (even if Philogene has ended up costing significantly more than they sold him for) following a year of first-team experience.
Archer proved he is more than capable of playing at this level as one of few bright sparks in Sheffield United’s relegation last season, and while Philogene hasn’t yet done that, he showed his attacking potential at Hull City. He led the Championship in 2023-24 for the number of times he took a shot or created a chance following a carry, doing so 2.7 times per 90 on average), and he also led Hull’s leaderboards for both goals (12) and assists (6).
In Iling-Junior and Dobbin, Villa have two more exciting prospects who will need game time at the top level.
Iling-Junior made four starts and 20 appearances off the bench in Serie A for Juventus last season, racking up 801 minutes of action for a giant of European football, so he has a decent amount of experience of playing at the top end of a big league, but may well want to be playing just as much or more this season. He also played 90 minutes in the Coppa Italia final last season as Juventus secured a trophy with a 1-0 win over Atalanta, so he has experience of winning a major trophy which will only help him going forward.
Dobbin was expected to kick on last term after spending 2022-23 playing regularly on loan at Derby in the Championship, but struggled for game time back at Everton, and will hope this move to Villa can help reignite his career. He played just 286 minutes in all competitions for Everton last season. Both he and Iling-Junior – as well as Philogene – play out wide, though, so there is plenty of competition for places on the flanks.
Barrenechea is the biggest unknown quantity of the lot, but after spending 2023-24 on loan from Juventus at fellow Serie A side Frosinone, for whom he started 32 of their 38 league games and came off the bench in four of the remaining six, he has a full year of top-flight football under his belt.
A deep-lying midfield technician who is extremely comfortable on the ball, Barrenechea likes to dictate play while barely ever getting close to the opposition’s goal (as his heatmap from last season below shows). He also brings a tenacity to midfield, although he can dive into tackles a little too readily, picking up 10 yellow cards in league games last season.
It all adds up to a major refresh of the Villa squad and a group to be excited about for years to come. There’s an argument that Emery perhaps should have looked to the club’s academy to promote players rather than paying to bring in others, but it is also understandable that with so much at stake and with the club now in the Champions League, the manager perhaps didn’t want to take too many risks.
One way of mitigating against the risks that will come with signing so many youngsters is to bring in a bit of experience, and there is talk that Villa are hoping to add to their older contingent this summer, too. Having already brought in Barkley, the rumour mill is suggesting Emery may also be interested in João Félix, Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips, all of whom would add both Premier League and Champions League experience to the squad.
It’s a hugely exciting time at Villa Park. If the club’s summer transfer business works out, things could remain that way for a long time.
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