This article is taken from the February 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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It is an oddity of football that while clubs might demand a fortune to sell a player, the sums for managers and coaches are far smaller. And yet the influence of a manager is so often far greater.

Last October, Aston Villa sacked Steven Gerrard as manager. Villa had won only two games out of 12 in the Premier League and had just been thumped 3-0 by newly promoted Fulham. After a two-game interregnum — in which Villa won one and lost one — Unai Emery, a new manager, arrived from Spain. In his first five games, he beat Manchester United, Brighton and Tottenham and lost only once, to Liverpool.

A team that had seemed to be heading for a relegation fight was transformed. Despite a shock FA Cup exit, Villa supporters started to look forward to matches, and look up the table, not down. All thanks to a man for whom Villa had paid just over £5 million to release from his contract at Villarreal — less than Villa had spent on fringe players such as Morgan Sanson and Marvelous Nakamba, who rarely make the matchday squad, and Bertrand Traoré and Wesley, exiled and out on loan overseas.

Gerrard took a team assembled at the cost of hundreds of millions of pounds and turned it into relegation fodder

Emery is something special. He took Sevilla to the Europa League final three years in a row, won the same tournament with Villarreal, and last year took the team the Spanish call the Submarino Amarillo to the semi-finals of the Champions League. He has managed Arsenal and Paris St Germain too, but after Sevilla and Villarreal, a move to the real Villa made natural sense.

The contrast with the performance and results under Gerrard says everything. The former Liverpool midfielder might have been a modern great during his playing career, and he might have led Rangers to their first Scottish title in a decade, but the test of managing in the Premier League was just beyond him.

Rigid in his tactics, and tactless with his players, Gerrard took a team assembled at the cost of hundreds of millions of pounds and turned it into relegation fodder. The tactics that had worked at Rangers — modelled on the shape of his former team Liverpool — were soon exploited by wilier Premier League managers.

Fullbacks who bomb forwards leave inviting spaces; even more so when a team plays only a single defensive midfielder. Box-to-box midfielders, tucked wide to provide cover for fullbacks, can no longer give their best attributes to the team. Ultimately football is a game in which teams fight one another to control spaces: shutting down space for the opposition and working out ways to create your own spaces — manipulating play to force situations in which your players can outnumber defenders two-versus-one.

Gerrard never seemed to realise that his job, as manager, was to find a way of playing that would achieve these things. Week after week, he would keep the same defence and  midfield, and desperately chop and change his front three attacking players. In interviews, it became clear that he believed that the task of creating chances and scoring goals had little to do with him, the manager, and more to do with a belief in spontaneous “magic” created by “big players”.

“I have challenged the forward players to give us more in that area of the pitch,” he complained after a disappointing draw against Nottingham Forest. “We lacked a bit of quality, moments of magic … we just need more quality from some of our big hitters.”

He blamed his players for the poor performances and made clearly biased choices in his team selections. Tyrone Mings, formerly club captain, had the armband torn abruptly from him and was dropped. “When Tyrone … looks me in the eye and shows that he’s ready to play,” Gerrard told reporters, “he’ll get opportunities.” After an embarrassing opening day defeat, Mings was back and ever-present thereafter.

In similar fashion, Gerrard signed his old teammate Philippe Coutinho from Barcelona, to play in the same position as Villa’s recent record signing Emiliano Buendía. Other positions needed strengthening, but he wanted Coutinho, whom he picked regardless of performance.

There is composure and a cerebral approach to coaching that respects the players and shows an understanding of shape, tactics and game management

Clearly, a deal had been done between them: sign for Villa and I will pick you every week, Gerrard offered, and you will get into the Brazil squad for the World Cup. Out of form, Coutinho played but failed to make the national team. Buendía, in with a shot of making the Argentina squad, was dropped by his country after failing to play for Villa.

There is no such pig-headedness from Emery. Instead, there is composure and a cerebral approach to coaching that respects the players and shows an understanding of shape, tactics and game management. Within days of training the squad, Villa’s players — tactically lost and shapeless under Gerrard — knew their role and had clear purpose. The goals came straight away, not from magic but from clever play that pulled opponents out of position. The team was no longer outmuscled or outnumbered in midfield, and defended its leads with calm and resolve.

They were the same players as before: talented and expensively assembled, admittedly with less consistency and squad depth than the Champions League teams above them. The difference — and it was an immediate difference — was the manager. You cannot blag your way through a management career, and you cannot rely on your reputation as a former player. Unai Emery is a big manager, and big managers are alchemists who really can turn base metal into gold.