‘Not my objective’: Unai Emery explains Aston Villa focus in pre-season friendlies

Unai Emery has given an insight into the planning and desired outcomes of his squad’s pre-season fixtures in Louisville, St Louis and Nashville.

Aston Villa drew with Eintracht Frankfurt and Nashville either side of a win against St Louis City. While it’s always better to win than draw and to draw than lose, it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the result of any pre-season friendly is not a priority. That’s not what they’re for.

But with a squad the size of Villa’s, with players returning to the club for pre-season at different times from different competitions on different continents, with an ever-growing number of friendlies on the summer docket, what are they for?

After Villa concluded their American adventure with a 2-2 draw, Emery discussed the game with the club’s media team.

Villa put themselves in a commanding position. Ollie Watkins scored again and Donyell Malen added a goal to his collection of friendly assists to take a 2-0 lead. Nashville scored a couple of late goals as Villa went a little ragged at the back but Emery wasn’t too disheartened.

The manager knows that winning isn’t the most important outcome and that identifying weaknesses and areas of improvement is no bad thing, especially when they only come into focus when most of the probable first team aren’t on the pitch.

“Of course, it’s not my objective now to play or set the starting XI players,” said Emery after the draw in Tennessee, presumably not actually speaking in Roman numerals.

“I want to try to get everyone in the same structure and in the same combination or different combinations we can have.”

The changing face of friendlies

Villa are quietly at the forefront of an evolving philosophy when it comes to Premier League teams and friendly fixtures.

Between Walsall last month and Villarreal on Sunday, Villa scheduled eight friendlies. If won, that would be enough games to reach Wembley in the FA Cup twice over.

Why so many? Because Villa have a big squad full of players in various states of match sharpness but, hopefully, still fit without exception. Footballers don’t come back for a new season looking like me anymore. It only takes a look at Morgan Rogers thundering around the pitch this month to see that.

Some of Villa’s players haven’t had a game since the middle of May, others have barely stopped at all, others still are somewhere in between. Planning the pre-season friendly schedule, from how many games are played and against whom to which players feature and for how long, is a more bespoke challenge than ever before.

It would be nice to come away with eight wins but this is the reality of friendlies in the foothills of 2025/26 and it’s not conducive to results. The whole purpose of these games when taken collectively isn’t just about fitness but about depth and shape and, as Emery says, combinations.

That’s why the invitation to play Hansa Rostock in between the Walsall game and the United States mini-tour was easy to accept and it’s why Villa can finish pre-season with two matches in different countries in the space of 25 hours this coming weekend.

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