Unai Emery, despite spending just 16 difficult months as the head coach of Arsenal, still found the time to showcase the ruthless streak hiding beneath his outwardly affable demeanour. It was he who stripped Granit Xhaka of the captaincy following that toxic afternoon against Crystal Palace in October 2019.
And, after taking over from Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa, Emery may have a decision to make regarding the future of another player who lost the armband in highly contentious circumstances.
Tyrone Mings, replaced as Villa skipper by John McGinn over the summer, has enjoyed a rather mixed beginning to the Emery era. He marked Cristiano Ronaldo out of the game during the 3-1 victory over Manchester United at Villa Park (although that is admittedly a far easier task these days than it used to be) before enduring 30 nightmare minutes against the same opposition just four days later.
During the 2-1 win at Brighton and Hove Albion last time out, Ezri Konsa looked by far the more comfortable of the Villa centre-halves. Mings, while still playing a key role in an impressive comeback victory, allowed those old errors to slip back into his game again at the Amex; the lapses in concentration which, at this level, can often make the difference between three points and none.
The sort of lapse Mings has been guilty off throughout his Aston Villa career.
Could Aston Villa replace Tyrone Mings with Spain international Pau Torres?
The dilemma facing Emery is whether he believes Mings, who left out of England’s 2022 World Cup squad, can raise his game consistently enough. Or whether it is, in fact, the right time to move on from a soon-to-be 30-year-old centre-half who’s contract has fewer than two years left to run.
Reports linking Aston Villa with Villarreal’s Spain international Pau Torres potentially hint at the latter. Emery, 90Min says, is a big fan of Torres, and believes a player he worked with on the Castellon Coast can thrive in England.
“Pau Torres is an amazing player,” Emery told Football London last year. “I think he’s top. I’ve been a coach at Sevilla, PSG, Arsenal and I’ve never seen a centre-back like Pau Torres.
“I think he’s going to play at the highest level. He’s playing now in the national team but he can play in the top teams in Europe very soon.”
‘Pau Torres is an amazing player’
Torres, like Mings, is a left-footed centre-half. At 25, he is also four years younger. If Mings has already reached his peak, then you cannot say the same of a man who could start for Spain in Qatar, and has come on leaps and bounds since rising through the ranks at his boyhood club.
Torres, who turned down Tottenham Hotspur in 2021 and played a major role in Villareal’s run to the Champions League semi-finals, will cost a minimum of £40 million. Aston Villa have shown on multiple occasions during the Edens and Sawiris era, however, that they are willing to back their managers with high-profile, high-cost additions. See Diego Carlos (another La Liga import), for instance.
Having made such an effort to bring Emery in, it feels unlikely that the Villa bosses would not do all they can to back him in the transfer market. If that means replacing one of Villa’s biggest names and most long-serving players, in favour of a younger model, then so be it.
Progress is progress, after all.
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