Aston Villa chief Monchi set to LEAVE club in major blow to Unai Emery

Monchi, Aston Villa's president of football operations, is poised to leave the club. The Spaniard is a key ally of the club's head coach, Unai Emery.

The former Sevilla and AS Roma chief moved to Villa Park two years ago and has a good track record while working alongside Emery, who enjoyed success at Sevilla while working in tandem with the 57-year-old.

Monchi has overseen five transfer windows at Villa, who have endured a challenging start to the 2025-26 campaign having failed to win any of their five Premier League fixtures to date.

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Scrutiny on the club's record in the transfer market has grown in recent months, though, with a number of players who were at the club before Monchi's arrival still key players under Emery, who has done a fine job since succeeding Steven Gerrard back in October 2022.

Villa competed in the Champions League last season after a fine 2023-24 campaign under the guidance of Emery, who led the Midlands outfit to a fourth-placed finish in the Premier League.

Villa are currently 18th in the Premier League standings after losing three and drawing two of their five games so far this term. They scored their first goal of the season in Sunday's 1-1 draw with Sunderland. Emery was not happy post-match, telling Match of the Day: "Frustrated and disappointed a little bit, but not with the result. It should have been easier to take advantage [against 10 players] but we were not playing with our identity, with the ideas we have been building in the last three years.

"With some new players we have to adapt with the players we have, and we know we want to control the game, to dominate but I am disappointed and frustrated more for how we were not achieving our identity.

"There is still work to do with the point we achieved, it's not enough, of course, after playing with one more player for 60 minutes, we should be happier, we have to work and be demanding, to get our consistency through our demands."

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