Fulham vs Aston Villa: Why Emery needs Leon Bailey to step up for Craven Cottage trip

Despite a tumultuous summer of 2024, over which PSR loomed like the blackest of rainclouds, it’s arguable Aston Villa have started the 2024/25 campaign better than any could have reasonably expected. 

With 14 points from seven games, they’re keeping in touch with the season’s front-runners, and a famous 1-0 victory over Bayern Munich in October made it six points from six in the UEFA Champions League. Youri Tielemans is thriving in midfield alongside Amadou Onana, Jhon Duran keeps scoring worldies and Morgan Rogers has the world at his feet. Things are, almost entirely, good.  

But while fans are largely happy with that, Unai Emery - ever the perfectionist - will want more. He’ll be seeking out the (few) rough edges and trying to smooth them - and there’s one that sticks out prominently: Leon Bailey’s difficult start to the season. 

It’s worth prefacing this conversation with the fact he has clearly been affected by a niggling injury, sustained early on against Leicester City (and following an odd scare in the game before against Arsenal). Despite a full and effective pre-season, Bailey’s hamstring hasn’t been quite right. 

But he’s been good to go, one way or another, in the last three fixtures, playing just over an hour against Ipswich Town and Manchester United, plus over 30 minutes against Bayern. Other injuries - notably to John McGinn and Jacob Ramsey - may have forced him into the mix earlier than planned for, but the reality is Emery wouldn’t send him onto the pitch unless he was physically fit, given other options are available. 

Conditioning doesn’t seem to be the real issue for Bailey, though. Instead it’s confidence - or a lack of it - that’s really harming his performances right now. 

Far too many runs with the ball are checked back, rarely is the ball passed forward. It has been a little odd to watch him shrink into his own shell so rapidly, given the heights he hit and the stands he set for himself last season. And that’s another part of this equation: After a stunning 2023/24 campaign, in which he earned a new deal thanks to performances that often left Moussa Diaby on the outside looking in, the bar for Bailey has been moved to a very high place. 

The stats bear this out clearly too. His dribble success rate has dropped from 48% in 2023/24 to 33.3%; his shot-creating actions have halved (2.33 per 90, down from 4.22 per 90); while his unsuccessful touches figure has spiked too (3.1 per 90, up from 2.2 per 90). 

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There’s been one really bright moment, where he beat Leif Davis down the flank and sent in a superb wrong-foot cross for Ollie Watkins to nod home, but beyond that, there’s been an overriding lack of intent and… well, belief, in his wing play. 

This is not the Bailey that Villa are accustomed to. It’s not the Bailey that became something of a galvanising presence down the stretch last season. It’s not the Bailey that delivered key goals and assists against Arsenal (twice) and Manchester City, emerging as a vital player in the process. 

He once again spent the international break with Villa, not Jamaica, highly likely finetuning his fitness and getting the reps in. As Emery juggles a blitz of injuries to his midfield ahead of the Premier League return at Fulham this weekend, perhaps a renewed and refreshed Bailey can go some way to solving one of his problems.