The Athletic.

Hello and welcome to the TIFO football podcast. I'm John McKenzie. I'm joined, as I always am by

my good friend and producer, Mike Zimmerman. Mike, how you doing? It's Thanksgiving week here in the

US, John, so just getting ready for that turkey. You feeling very thankful?

Absolutely, of course. I mean, I'm here with you. And another thing we have to feel thankful about

is our guest today because we are joined by Sam Tai, who is often seen on the Tifo IRL channel,

also seen on lots of other outlets as well. And we are talking everything, Unae Emery and Aston Villa, because there's probably

no other team in the last calendar year. He's had quite the vertiginous rise that Aston Villa have had.

Mike, you've just listened to that conversation. What did you make of it?

I really enjoyed Sam kind of talking about the evolution from the team under Stephen Gerard to Unai Emery. Under Gerard,

there wasn't a clear picture or direction or identity, whereas Uni

Amri came in wasn't necessarily popular amongst fans and there were some groans,

but there was a certain style. And I think that took some

time, but we're now seeing how Emery has molded this villa team into a potential, you know,

still early, but potential Champions League qualifying team. Yeah, and I know as a Liverpool fan,

it will have been hard for you to say those last few words. But I think, again, as always, the best thing for us to do is to just move straight into hearing what Sam has to say about Unae Emery and his Aston Villa.

Unai Emory has taken the Premier League by storm.

Since arriving midway through the 2022 season,

he's had Aston Villa putting themselves in contention for a spot in the Champions League.

Now, the last time Emery was in the Premier League, things didn't go quite so well for him.

So why is everything coming up Emery at Aston Villa at the moment?

Well, we're fortunate enough to be joined by someone who has followed Unae Emery's Asden Villa from concept to its most recent form.

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