Aston Villa’s players were flat.
They had intently observed the club’s struggle to recruit due to financial restrictions and saw a popular member of the squad, Jacob Ramsey, depart.
Attempting to arrest the slump on and off the pitch — no goals in the opening four league matches — captain John McGinn held conversations with the squad, asserting that standards needed to be raised again and mobilising was the best course of action.
In a little more than two months, the transformation has been stark. Back then, there were growing concerns an old squad was showing its age, lacking athleticism and the stimulus to go again. On Sunday, they out-worked arguably the Premier League’s most energetic side, Bournemouth.
The 4-0 victory was not just emphatic in the scoreline — it was Villa’s most comprehensive result since the 5-0 win at Sheffield United in February 2024 — but impressive in how they outmanoeuvred and out-worked their counterparts.
When Villa needed leaders and clarity at the start of this season, McGinn offered both.
He reached 300 Villa appearances against Maccabi Tel Aviv and three days later, for Bournemouth’s visit, moved in front of Vic Crowe into 16th on the list of highest number of games for the club. He could climb into the top 10 by the conclusion of the campaign.
“He’s a really great guy,” says one observer close to the dressing room, speaking on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak. “There have been examples of some young players being asked if they want to go on loan and those clubs would call John asking about them. He helps everyone in the dressing room, bonding all these different ages and nationalities together. He is the cornerstone.”
Whenever a young player arrives or signs a new contract, McGinn will make a point of introducing himself to him and his family. He has created a group chat with the younger Scottish players, including Aidan Borland and Rory Wilson, so they feel he is approachable and can help sort tickets.
On July 27, Villa rejected a formal offer from Everton for McGinn. “He is not for sale at any price,” was the response of one senior figure.
By that stage, Villa had made it clear the 31-year-old was staying and hoped to agree a new contract after the window. The extension has since been finalised.
Senior employees speak glowingly about McGinn’s character to lead from the front, symbolising the very essence of what Emery wants in a player: ultra-professionalism, a hardened mentality and an unrelenting desire to maximise their inherent gifts. This was the common thread that ran throughout the team on Sunday.
McGinn has been intertwined with every memorable moment in Villa’s recent history. He has often been at the heart of things. His tally of 33 goals and 41 assists, for a midfielder who can operate in any position and carry out any job diligently, does not tell the full tale. He became the first Villa player to score in the Championship, Premier League, Conference League, Europa League and Champions League. Every rung of the ladder, McGinn has been there, at the front, climbing upwards.
He set the tone in the promotion-winning 2018-19 campaign with a brace against Nottingham Forest in March. Three games later came a thunderous, winding side-volley against Sheffield Wednesday. Gloriously, the season ended with a play-off final goal against Derby County and being voted players’ player and supporters’ player of the year.
The next rung up, McGinn followed. He led the resistance against relegation in Villa’s first year back in the top flight. In the next, he scored in the 7-2 thrashing of Liverpool. Every chapter of Villa’s story will have “Meatball”, as is his nickname, involved somewhere.
Even in a stumbling Conference League performance against Zrinjski Mostar in 2023, McGinn’s header in the 94th minute secured the club’s first win in the competition.
Spool forward and goals against Bologna in the Champions League and Europa League in successive campaigns proved crucial.
On the nearly heroic night against eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League quarter-finals in April, when they touched heights that seemed otherworldly, McGinn whipped Villa Park into a frenzy with a goal that started in his own half.
The move — a charging surge from deep, through PSG’s midfield and smashed past the world’s best goalkeeper in Gianluigi Donnarumma — was emblematic of McGinn. That dogged desire to do the hard yards, to outhussle the opponent, to let them know, regardless of who they are and their stature, they are in for a fight.
The standout individual performances under Emery have frequently been delivered by McGinn. In the 1-0 victory against Manchester City in December 2023, McGinn was by far the best player on the pitch. Three days later against Arsenal, he rounded off a sweeping, back-to-front move that coalesced every ingredient of Emery’s style for the only goal of the game.
McGinn is a midfielder of veritable quality and nothing — be it his running gait, unflashy appearance or refreshingly frank interviews — should belie this.
There is no shortcut for hard work and he has continued to break boundaries many thought he was incapable of. McGinn wanted to improve physically last summer, enlisting the help of conditioning coach Natalie Kollars, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.. In his words, he was “beasted” in 45-degree heat.
His humility has always remained. He engages in community schemes for the club’s foundation, helps out raising money for hospices, sends supportive video messages to those who need comfort, auctions match-worn shirts for charity and is willing to speak on societal matters.
In 2023, he won the Professional Footballers’ Association Community Champion award. On matchdays, McGinn will go out of his way to speak to mascots and invariably possesses a frankness, where he will be the first to say when he has had a poor game.
For a man who remains so humble, he reluctantly divulged to a handful of journalists last week that he has hired a private chef. In his mind, this was necessary to assist with performance, but being someone “from a very humble part of the world” made him worried that people would think he had changed.
In their first meeting, Emery asked McGinn what his favourite position was. “Not on the bench,” he replied.
“I’ll never forget my first meeting with him. It was probably the most fascinating half an hour I’ve had in my career,” recalled McGinn. “He said: ‘I’ve watched your last 10 matches in detail and not so good.’ But then he said: ‘Luckily for you, I’ve watched the 10 before and the 10 before that, so I believe you can be an asset to us.’”
Villa’s captain is perennially immersed in a battle to comply with his manager’s demands, which team-mates take notice of and follow his lead. This was underlined against Bournemouth.
The Scotland international takes everything on the chin and gets back to work, proceeding to go up another level. This is the theme of McGinn at Villa, 301 and counting.
In March, McGinn spoke after Villa’s Champions League last-16 victory against Club Brugge. “We are giving these fans experiences they’ll remember forever,” he said.
He then went on to speak about players writing their names in club folklore, which, in his case, has surely been achieved. Quite simply, McGinn is a modern-day Villa legend.
