One of the things I enjoyed most about Aston Villa's win over Viking was the way Unai Emery set his team up, because I don't think anybody could have looked at the starting XI when it came through and confidently predicted exactly what we were going to see. There were so many different possibilities given the problems we've got at left-back, and I think most people were probably expecting John McGinn to play there, or perhaps Tyrone Mings, but what Emery came up with was something completely different and I thought it worked brilliantly.
It's very rare that we see Villa line up with two genuine wide players under Emery, and I genuinely can't remember us doing it before in quite the same way. We've obviously had players operating in those positions, but we've generally had at least two number 10s in the team, with one of them starting from a wider area and moving inside. Against Viking, we had Ibrahim Mbaye and Alysson holding the width, and it was really refreshing to see Villa play in that way, particularly when you consider how effective both of them were at different stages of the game.
The really interesting part was what happened when Villa had possession, because without the ball it was essentially the same 4-2-3-1 shape that we're accustomed to seeing, with João Gomes operating at right-back. As soon as we had the ball, Gomes moved into midfield, McGinn pushed forward to operate alongside Emi Buendia and Mings dropped back to form a three with Pau Torres and Victor Lindelöf. It gave us a completely different shape in possession and I thought Viking found it incredibly difficult to work out who they were supposed to be picking up.
McGinn almost had a free role at times, and I thought he and Buendia were finding some lovely pockets of space between the lines, with Viking's midfield struggling to get close enough to either of them. Having Alysson and Mbaye staying wide was a big part of that because it stretched the pitch and gave those two players more room to operate centrally, while Gomes stepping into midfield allowed Villa to control the game and move the ball around with real confidence.
I thought Gomes was excellent, and he's another player who is showing us different things about his game as the season progresses. He's so good defensively that I think he could probably play as an orthodox right-back if he was asked to, but the way he moved into midfield and helped Villa dictate the game was really impressive. It was a good night for the Brazilian lads with him and Alysson, and I thought they were two of our best performers.
From where I sit at Villa Park, you get a really good view of the shape of the team and the movements that are taking place across the pitch, and I found it fascinating watching how comfortable everybody looked with what they were being asked to do. There were times when we were playing some really intricate football, moving Viking around and creating space, but we were also quite happy to go direct when the opportunity was there. I thought the variation in our attacking play was excellent, and on another evening we could quite easily have scored more than three.
The other thing worth considering is how difficult it must have been for Viking to prepare for that. They've obviously watched Villa and looked at the way we've played previously under Emery, but there's absolutely no way they could have anticipated us lining up in that particular system. We were all trying to work it out when the team was announced, so I can't imagine their coaching staff had prepared for Gomes effectively playing two positions, McGinn moving into central areas and two genuine wingers stretching the game.
What I particularly liked was that Emery didn't simply find somebody to fill in at left-back and hope for the best. We've got a genuine problem in that position at the moment, with injuries leaving us short of options, but rather than allowing that to become a weakness, he found a way of changing the system and getting a really good attacking performance out of the team. It was a very clever solution, and I thought it was another example of just how tactically switched on this manager is.
I'm not necessarily expecting us to play like that every week, and it might well have been something designed specifically for this game, but it's another string to our bow and that's what excites me about this group of players. With the previous team, and I don't mean this as a criticism because they achieved some incredible things, you could generally have a pretty good guess at the starting XI and how we were going to play. With this group, we're learning new things all the time, and I don't think we're anywhere near understanding all the different combinations and systems Emery might be able to use.
The emergence of the wide players is a big part of that. Alysson was absolutely sensational against Viking, Mbaye had a good game on the opposite side and we've also got Garnacho coming off the bench and looking increasingly comfortable. He didn't have a huge amount of time to influence the game, particularly with Villa already well ahead and understandably taking their foot off the pedal a little bit, but I thought he did quite a lot with the minutes he was given and was unlucky not to come away with a goal or an assist.
We've now got players who can offer something very different to what we've been used to seeing, and that's going to give Emery more options depending on the opposition and how he wants to approach certain games. There are still going to be occasions where he wants McGinn or Manzambi operating from wider starting positions and moving inside, but having the ability to use genuine width on both sides gives Villa another way of hurting teams.
I thought it was a brilliant performance tactically, particularly considering the circumstances surrounding the team selection, and it's another reason why I'm feeling increasingly good about what we're doing at the moment. We've had a disruptive summer, there have been injuries and we've had to integrate a lot of new players, but Emery is finding different ways of getting performances out of this group and we're starting to see some really exciting football.
The fact that we went into the game wondering how on earth Villa were going to solve the left-back problem and came away talking about how good we looked going forward probably tells you everything you need to know about the manager we've got.