Aston Villa 2025-26 preview: Unai Emery aiming to maintain momentum and avoid 'third season syndrome'
Unai Emery heads into the 2025-26 campaign looking to avoid the third season syndrome which has impacted so many of his predecessors as Villa manager.
It is at around the point the Spaniard’s reign has now reached, two years and eight months since his arrival, when things have so often gone wrong in the past.
Ron Atkinson, Brian Little and Dean Smith all celebrated their third anniversary in charge but never reached the fourth. Graham Taylor, admittedly, left on a high to take the England job in 1990 after guiding the club to a second-placed Division One finish in his third season at the helm.
The only Villa manager since Ron Saunders to make it to their fourth anniversary was Martin O’Neill and even that was only a matter of days before he dramatically stormed out in August, 2010. It had also been during the Irishman’s third season in charge when things first began to unravel, after the ill-fated Moscow surrender.
There is no suggestion Emery’s reign, by any measure the most successful since Saunders, is about to crumble anytime soon.
Even so, this coming season feels a particularly important one, with the challenge of maintaining the momentum built ever since he worked through the door in November 2022 harder than ever.
Last season was, by almost every measure, another of progress for Villa, featuring another high-placed Premier League finish, a deep run in the FA Cup and most impressively of all, a Champions League quarter-final.
