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Few teams beat Manchester City, let alone dominate them, but Unai Emery’s Aston Villa side managed just that this week, preventing the Premier League champions from having a single shot after the 11th minute.
The score was 1-0, but that was on the back of 22 shots by Villa, to just two shots by Manchester City. That’s reportedly the joint-most shots faced by a Pep Guardiola team, and joint-fewest created, in any league game during his time at either Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City
Aston Villa’s win also put the Claret and Blues above Manchester City in the Premier League.
While only 15 games have been played so far this season, Villa’s good form stems all the way back to Emery’s appointment on 24 October 2022.
Aston Villa have the third-best record in the Premier League in 2023, winning 23 of their 37 games played this calendar year so far. Only Manchester City have won more. Compare that to 2022, when Villa, mainly under Steven Gerrard, had the 12th best record in the league.
They only won 11 games in 2022, and two of those wins came in the two matches that Emery was in charge for before the World Cup break.
Emery achieved that remarkable turnaround with basically the same players as Gerrard. Only two players in the starting eleven against Manchester City – Pau Torres and Youri Tielemans – were not at the club when Gerrard lost his job. The three Villa players with the most minutes this season – Ezri Konsa, John McGinn and Douglas Luiz have all been at the club since the 2019/20 season.
