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Aston Villa have made no secret of their aim to return to the Champions League. They've been there before and they want more, and the truth is their freedom to bring in players while achievement financial compliance probably depends upon it.
Villa are still pushing towards that goal on two fronts. They're third in the Premier League with 23 matches played despite no appreciable improvement in the transfer market, and have booked their place in the last 16 of the Europa League.
Villa's midfield injuries are piling up and Emery needs to find an answer
In many ways, Villa have little about which to complain. They're four points off the top of the table, a gap that shortened as recently as last weekend. The closer they are to the top, the greater their hopes of securing that Champions League spot when push comes to shove.
Even their injury record might be observed with little sympathy by the likes of Crystal Palace and Everton, teams who've taken points off Villa this month despite having more absentees.
Villa's injury crisis is cruelly laser-focused. They started the season with enviable depth in the centre of midfield but it's been decimated in the space of just a few weeks.
The precursors revealed themselves in the first half of the season. Boubacar Kamara, Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana all spent time out of the side because of minor injuries. Crucially, they were ample cover for one another in the short-term.
One by one, Emery's lost his first-choice midfielders for much longer periods. Kamara had surgery on a knee injury sustained in Villa's cup tie at Tottenham Hotspur and is done for the season.
John McGinn was injured against Everton and is set for a couple of months out. He's been played higher up the pitch but made up part of a potential solution for the next problem: on Tuesday, it was reported that the injury Tielemans picked up against Newcastle United is likely to rule him out for even longer than the Villa captain.
Emery can still call upon Onana but everything else requires compromise. Ross Barkley will soon be back from an injury of his own and Lamare Bogarde has held the fort at times already in 2025/26. George Hemmings, the breakout star of Villa's pre-season programme, has now played first team football both domestically and in Europe.
Villa don't have the flexibility Emery would surely like when it comes to player trading but they've had no choice but to attempt to address their situation in the middle of the pitch.
Emery's incoming business in the January window is, in part, an attempt to plug some immediate personnel gaps while bolstering morale at this crucial juncture in a season of such promise.
Striker Tammy Abraham is expected to be confirmed as a Villa player imminently, making permanent a loan move that made him a hero at Villa Park in 2018-19.
Douglas Luiz is beloved too. The Brazilian international is set to be Villa's midfield fix, returning on loan from the club to whom Villa sold him somewhat reluctantly in the summer of 2024.
He knows the club, the squad and the system. As much as Luiz comes with an injury risk in his own right, he might have been the smartest realistic stopgap on the market.
Such emergency measures aren't conducive to achieving the kind of lofty aims Villa have in mind for this season. Luiz isn't Kamara or Tielemans, never mind the combination of both. He fills a need directly and with a built-in feelgood factor, but he is quite plainly an imperfect fit.
Emery has spent 2025/26 solving problems in full view of the watching public, lifting his team to long-forgotten heights in the face of transfer limitations, a raft of very adept low-block opponents and, most recently and most damaging of all, the wholesale destruction of his midfield.
The Villa boss has won silverware against the odds in the past. He's taken on challenges at Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain that didn't turn out so well.
Yet Emery is now stood at the precipice of his biggest challenge yet. Drafting in the sentimental choices of Abraham and Luiz to successfully keep Villa's dreams on track in the face of lengthening odds and deteriorating luck would be his greatest-ever triumph.
The one positive from a Villa perspective is that there's something oddly but profoundly Emery-shaped about the uphill battle ahead.
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