Aston Villa appoint Unai Emery as Steven Gerrard replacement as ex-Arsenal manager returns to Premier League

Alex Young @alexwsyoung24 October 2022

Aston Villa have appointed former Arsenal manager Unai Emery as Steven Gerrard’s replacement.

Gerrard was last week sacked just hours after Villa’s 3-0 loss at Fulham, being dismissed before taking the team bus back to the Midlands.

Former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino was understood to be the club’s first-choice target before his lack of interest become apparent.

Villa moved quickly to lure Emery - who has impressed at Villarreal - back to the Premier League. Emery rejected Newcastle last season. He will begin work on November 1.

Emery was due to be out of contract with Villarreal at the end of this season and Villa will reportedly pay a buy-out fee to the LaLiga club of around £5million.

Villarreal said Emery would hold a farewell press conference at the club's training ground on Tuesday.

Emery said it had been a "perfect" journey with Villarreal, but he had made a "difficult" decision to seek a new challenge.

"For the past few days I have been thinking carefully and feeling what my decision should be," Emery wrote on Twitter. "Farewell is hard and difficult, but my feeling and my reflection is that I must start a new project."

Additional reporting by Press Association.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in