Aston Villa are faltering after midfield injuries and Unai Emery must act fast to get back on track

Aston Villa dropped the ball in their Premier League loss against Wolverhampton Wanderers, a result that took Wolves to the grand total of 13 points.

Losing to Wolves in the league had only been achieved this season by West Ham United. Villa, who started and ended the game at Molineux in third place in the league table, were favourites on paper. Most Villa supporters harboured some trepidation, though, and not only because this is just one of those fixtures they never win.

Manager Unai Emery has faced some criticism in the aftermath. It’s justifiable – this was arguably Villa’s worst performance since he joined the club and the makings of it have been in evidence since the start of 2026.

Midfield has been decimated but there are other issues too

While outsiders spent their late Friday evenings giggling away about expected goals regression, the biggest defining factor behind Villa’s crumbling form is the mother of all midfield injury crises. That’s not an excuse and it shouldn’t be accepted as one, but it is a fact.

Losing Boubacar Kamara for the season and both Youri Tielemans and John McGinn for long spells was bound to have a negative impact. McGinn was playing in a different role but there’s not a team anywhere that can lose central midfielders of Kamara and Tielemans’ calibre and not feel it.

There was no reason to expect Villa to be any different. With that combination in midfield, often interchanging with an in-form Amadou Onana, Villa even flirted with a title challenge. It wasn’t a real target but injuries meant dropping away from that sort of level was inevitable.

The extent of the fall is disappointing. It’s a problem. Villa are under pressure to finish in the Champions League places and still have a squad capable of pulling off wins at the top end of the division.

With the head start they’d given themselves and the manager who was the unfair advantage underpinning that winning run, Villa should now be in the process of digging in, being aggressive, fighting tooth and nail for wins that might look a bit like draws everywhere but the scoresheet.

Failings of tempo and timbre

Instead, they look lost. Emery masterminded an extraordinary run of form, solving some pretty tricky puzzles with tactical tweaks along the way, but the Wolves defeat was the culmination of some worries that now stretch back for six weeks or more.

They’re not personnel worries. They’re not a straightforward loss of elite quality in midfield and a subsequent deterioration in performance. It looks more like heads have dropped after those injuries and Emery’s measured, meticulous playing style isn’t the kind of approach that’s likely to jolt a team out of a funk.

When a group of players looks like they’re in need of a win, they’re in need of a win. They don’t just give those away in the Premier League. You have to take them.

Patience is not a virtue for Villa. It’s a valid tactical outlook but not an energising force. A manager and squad clearly aware that the supporters aren’t at their best right now must surely be able to understand that the rhythm of their play isn’t going to draw anyone to the edge of their seat, never mind all the way to their feet.

It’s the same for the players. Wolves fans would disagree but Friday’s match would have been different if a fired-up Villa had torn out of the blocks and gone for the throat. We’ve discussed intent and intensity so many times this season but their match-winning potential is still being overlooked.

Take the games against Everton, against Brentford, against AFC Bournemouth, against Leeds United. There’s not a team of mugs among them but when good teams match or exceed the fire of the opposition, they can inflict game-defining damage.

You can’t solve a problem with fixes you don’t have

Villa not doing that might be emotionally linked to catastrophic midfield absences or simply robustly adhered-to tactics, but it’s an avoidable and self-fulfilling failing. If you mean to win, you can win like you mean it.

Emery’s patience – to repeat a clarification, it’s served Villa well over the last three years – is also at odds with what’s required in his team selection at this point in time.

The Villa boss knows his stuff. At the start of the season, Morgan Rogers looked for all the world like a player in need of a rest, didn’t get one, and played his way into a magnificent run of form. But that was August and September into October, not January and February into March.

Keeping faith with Ollie Watkins in the starting eleven was an unpopular choice. Watkins’ contribution to this club is beyond question but his starting berth is not. On current form, there’s a very strong case that he shouldn’t be keeping Tammy Abraham out of the side. It’s sad and it’s brutal, but it’s true. Emery’s having none of it.

Emi Buendía has run out of steam a little without a top-class double pivot behind him and a scoring striker in front. Lucas Digne is struggling. Leon Bailey has been awful since he came back from Roma.

Between them, those four players have played a total of 452 minutes in the last two Premier League fixtures.

Villa have persevered with their way of doing things despite the constituent pieces of the plan not all being there. They’ve lost key players and simply ramming onwards as if they’re still in the team isn’t the answer. It’s possible to get away with sticking over twisting but nobody’s getting away with anything after losing 2-0 to Wolves.

If ever there was a performance to highlight the need for pragmatism and the great brush of sweeping change, this was it. When it comes to tactics, attitude and team selection, the time has come to embrace the potential solutions that are available.

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