Aston Villa are working hard to improve Unai Emery’s squad before the window shuts at 11pm on Friday, August 30
John McGinn believes the challenges Aston Villa have faced in the summer transfer window will make Unai Emery even more determined to deliver success next season.
Villa were forced to generate funds from players sales before the end of June and sanctioned the £42m departure of Douglas Luiz to Juventus before Moussa Diaby left for Al-Ittihad in a deal worth £50.5m last month.
Monchi has signed seven players so far this in this window and wants to add more players to Emery’s squad before the end of the month, but the club must sell before they can buy to make space for new arrivals.
“I think what brings the fire out of him [Emery] is when things go against you, it would be easy for us to spend all the money in the world, but we can’t do that,” McGinn told talkSPORT. “It makes the job a little more difficult.
We can’t build on what we have achieved as easily. That is the challenge for him and he is excited for it and we are excited by how hungry he is for it.
“We did get good time off [in the summer], but we needed it because when you’re in here you are working and it is full on, but we wouldn’t change it for the world after what has happened in the last couple of seasons.
“The growth of the club, it’s crazy to look at. The fact that I’m still part of it is nuts. The last season was probably my favourite in professional football. We had massive lows as we were favourites to win the European tournament we were in. We could’ve done a bit better in the cup competitions, but we secured top four football and that was the primary aim.
“It probably wasn’t the aim at the start of the season. I just wanted to get better than seventh to be perfectly honest. I thought let’s just build. We managed to do it somehow despite the injuries we had. We crawled over the line in the end.
“Now we have a squad which is probably a bit more robust and there is more competition for places and there will be a bit more rotation.
