How player transformed from feared flop to Aston Villa superstar

How Leon Bailey evolved from feared flop to Aston Villa superstar

It has taken a very long time—too long, in fact—but at last, the greatest Leon Bailey is showing up at Aston Villa.

This past weekend, he gave an absolutely amazing performance against Nottingham Forest, earning him the Player of the Match award and an enthusiastic chorus of support from the Villa Park crowd. Ollie Watkins’ assist in the fourth minute was a truly amazing play, and his goal in the second half was a fitting reward for the mayhem he inflicted.

With those two goal involvements, he now has 15 for the season in the Premier League, ranking among the top 10 most prolific players in the competition. That indicates that he is keeping up with a number of well-known names, and he is doing so without reaching even close to penalty duty, which frequently inflates players’ stats.

 

 

 

To mention a few, he scored the game-winning goal against Manchester City, assisted on the winning goal against Arsenal, scored stunning goals against West Ham and Sheffield United, and against Fulham, nutmegged a defender before smashing one off the bar. He performs something amazing and entertaining with the ball almost every single week.

 

 

 

With the signing of a new long-term contract this month, Bailey’s life in Birmingham can arguably not get any better. When you consider how awful things started, it’s incredible to witness him today with a genuine smile on his face, Watkins gesturing for the audience to sing him, and footwork that consistently confounds full-backs.

He arrived in 2021 both injured and under obscene pressure to deliver, as 1/3rd of the Jack Grealish high-profile

replacement project. It did not go particularly well. Matchday five against Everton summed up his luck: he scored a

brilliant, brilliant goal, but he hit the ball so hard he injured himself doing so. That

was the story of Bailey’s first year: stop, start, stop, start en route to just 757

Premier League minutes and a measly three full 90s.

 

2022/23 was a bit better, but again hardly lived up to a £30m standard. Four goals

and four assists from 1,984 Premier League minutes was a step forward on

every front, but injury niggles and bad decisions still plagued his game.

 

This term – his third at Villa but crucially only his first with any form of stability –

he’s taken off like a rocket ship. He’s now as fast as he looks, his change-of-

direction dribbling is nearly impossible to contain, and he’s making consistently

good decisions in the final third, allowing the goals and assists to flow.

 

Over the past 12 months, it’s obvious he’s worked extremely hard on becoming a “two-way” winger: Someone who can cut

inside or take the outside line, willing to use either foot, therefore keeping defenders off-balance and constantly

guessing. He’s also stronger, more durable, more able to ride contact and

more able to cope with the physical demands of the league.

 

“The adaptation for some players is longer,” Emery said upon announcing the Jamaican’s new deal. “He came from

Germany and the first year he didn’t play consistently and he had some injuries.

He didn’t start strong [and] even last year he was not always consistent.”

 

“I explained it to him. ‘No Leon, I want more. We need more of you. You have to be consistent and focus more than you

are doing because it is not enough’. His commitment has improved and his focus

working harder every day has improved.”

Players with extraordinary potential but quirky personalities may find it challenging to transition and establish consistency; Bailey and Villa have found this to be a laborious two-and-a-half-year process. You can understand why there have been ups and downs when you consider that many well-known players have found it difficult to make the transition from the Bundesliga to the Premier League.

He has gradually advanced from feared flop to super-sub to star player—it has at times required the patience of a saint—and is now one of the first names on Emery’s team sheet as the squad mounts a high-stakes Champions League chase.

 

It’s impossible not to get the impression that there will be more.