Unai Emery, the coach of Aston Villa, is well aware of the intense pressure that comes with leading some of the biggest teams in Europe, having managed some of the biggest teams in the leagues, Chelsea and Manchester United, respectively.
Having advanced to three Champions League finals apiece in the last fifteen years, two of the Premier League’s most successful teams have come to symbolize dysfunction. Both teams have a practice of ruining the careers of some of the most prestigious football coaches, then paying them off, bringing in another famous name, and starting the cycle all over again. But the coach is ultimately to blame when a team isn’t succeeding. They either manage to understand the squad’s performance or they don’t. At Villa, Emery is doing that, while Pochettino and Ten Hag are failing in their respective capacities.
Coaches at the elite clubs are able to and often do identify a number of mitigating circumstances and explanations for their players’ subpar performances and results. It may be due to injuries, inadequate hiring, or unlucky refereeing choices. In Chelsea’s case, Ten Hag could argue that his United team is overburdened with ineffective players who have been there for too long, while Pochettino could contend that he has too many new players trying to settle in—he even called for more signings in January following Sunday’s 2-0 loss at Everton.
At both Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, Emery experienced the coach’s worst nightmare of losing control of his position due to a mix of poor performance and incapacity to manage players of high profile. However, the four-time Europa League champion is currently having a thrilling comeback at Villa. The 52-year-old may have learned from his painful 18-month stint at Arsenal, and Villa is currently benefiting from it. However, as James Olley’s assessment on Emery’s tenure at the Emirates made clear, his departure in November 2019 was accelerated by a combination of poor communication with players and staff, tactical disarray, and an inability to choose a settled side.
Pochettino and Ten Hag are currently at Chelsea and United, respectively, making identical blunders. Their employment chances are already in jeopardy, but to make matters worse, Emery has elevated Villa from midtable outsiders to the top four in just a single season. The Spanish coach’s accomplishments are harshly exposing the shortcomings of his rivals at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford, even though he may have accomplished this with a lesser team and undoubtedly fewer resources.
What Emery is accomplishing at Villa is an illustration of how a manager can seize control of a team and turn its fortunes around. Chelsea and United are experiencing the opposite. Great coaches somehow manage to get past the challenges that stand in their way. Emery is achieving that at Villa with a team that was on the verge of relegation under Steven Gerrard the previous season. Meanwhile, Chelsea and United are bouncing from crisis to crisis as a result of their respective coaches making things worse for themselves in already trying situations.
Last week, Chelsea suffered a 2-1 loss at United on a night when Pochettino started Marc Cucurella, an out-of-form left back, on the opposite side of defense. Due to that bad decision, United controlled that flank through Alejandro Garnacho, and Cucurella was substituted at the half. Similar to this, even though specialist left-back Sergio Reguilón was fit and on the bench for the 3-0 derby loss over Manchester City earlier in the season, Ten Hag started right-footed central defender Victor Lindelöf at left-back. The coaches made an incomprehensible selection decision with both Cucurella and Lindelof that backfired and undermined the players’ faith in their boss.
Maybe these were only minor problems, but Pochettino and Ten Hag have both made further mistakes in selection, and every one of them breeds uncertainty and perplexity. Both teams continue to struggle defensively, which has resulted in each team losing seven of their 16 Premier League games this season. They have placed too much reliance on Nicolas Jackson and Anthony Martial, and neither is willing to bench their own clumsy goalkeeper.
Despite possessing extensive experience in both domestic and Champions League competitions, Pochettino and Ten Hag have failed to instill in their squads the fundamentals of effective defense and organization. Thus, even though the players of both teams deserve some of the blame for their poor play, the coach is ultimately responsible.
The coach selects the team, plans the strategy, interacts with the players on the practice field, and is said to inspire and persuade them. In his final season at the club, 2012–13, Sir Alex Ferguson checked those items while leading United to the championship. The following season, United finished eighth, and David Moyes was sacked after ten months in charge despite still having the same squad. With coaches, it’s one manager doing everything right and the other doing pretty much everything wrong. Emery has reversed the trick by motivating Gerrard’s underperforming players to compete for the Villa championship.
Despite all of the mitigating circumstances, a team is typically only as successful as the coach tasked with leading it to victory, which explains Pochettino and Ten Hag’s failure.
