Aston Villa Player of the Season 2025/26
2025/26 was a historic season for Villa but one legendary player stood tallest of all
The 2025/26 season will go down in Aston Villa history. It was the most fruitful campaign since 1981/82 and everything before that was so long ago that it’s nigh-on impossible to compare. This season was more than special; it was an all-timer.
Villa won the Europa League, their second European title and the first trophy since 1996. You might have heard. Istanbul has joined Rotterdam in the Villa pantheon and manager Unai Emery has a legitimate claim to be the king of all he surveys.
His players are now one of those teams supporters will list by heart for the rest of their lives and there are true legends of the club walking among them. The end of August feels like a very long time ago.
One of my favourite Villa teams is the one that won promotion back to the Premier League in 2018/19. That play-off run, the final in particular, was the most exhilarating time to support Villa.
I adore those boys but winning a European trophy is a whole different playing field. There are three current Villa players who have been part of both. One, now the captain, scored in the play-off final and was the outstanding player at a much higher level seven years later.
We have in our ranks a bona fide Villa great.
Aston Villa Review’s Aston Villa Player of the Season for 2025/26 is: John McGinn.
McGinn’s direct impact in Villa’s greatest modern season
There are other players who can lay claim to an excellent season.
Ezri Konsa is among the most reliable players in the squad and is unquestionably one of the top centre-backs in the Premier League. Matty Cash has had a blinder. I’ve run out of positive things to say about Emi Buendía but if he’s had his best season in a Villa shirt then McGinn has too.
If Villa had failed to meet their objectives, McGinn’s season would have been at risk of being damned by faint praise. No footballer wants to put in their best performances in their absence and Villa’s form while McGinn was injured made that a real possibility.
The skipper’s role in dragging the team to the Europa League final and fourth place in the Premier League is the shortened version of what made him Villa’s best player of 2025/26.
That impact in what became a record season for perhaps the best bargain buy in the club’s history was quite remarkable.
McGinn’s game isn’t supposed to be about goals but who knows where Villa would be if he hadn’t come back with a major case of net lust.
Double figures for goals means only the other members of Villa’s most-used front four scored more than McGinn in all competitions. The timing of his goals even at the beginning of the season was absolutely crucial.
From scoring the only goal in Villa’s first win of the season against Bologna to his last goal against Liverpool to secure a Champions League spot in May, the role of captain has seldom been better fulfilled by a Villa player.
Expected goals (xG) was one of the themes of Villa’s season. The question of the sustainability or otherwise of Villa’s performances hinged on whether they could keep scoring from low-percentage situations.
They could and did. Only Buendía and Morgan Rogers outperformed their xG by more than McGinn.
Over the course of the Premier League season, McGinn scored two goals better than expected – not to be sniffed at.
Villa’s inspirational leader
McGinn wasn’t the top scorer or the most effective based on the chances that came his way. That’s not his role. What he did in that regard was a tangible manifestation of the role he does have, which he performed to a terrific standard in 2025/26.
Meatball is Villa’s leader, Villa’s captain, Villa’s heartbeat, Villa’s essence – call it what you want, McGinn is it.
I’ve supported Villa for my entire life and I’m the wrong side of forty but I have no qualms whatsoever about applying those labels to a man who had no connection to the club until 2018.
It’s no exaggeration to say that McGinn has come to embody Villa in multiple ways. He’s the club’s character made flesh. He’s the poster boy for the rise from the Championship to the Champions League. He was the man who lifted the first European trophy for 44 years.
One in a billion doesn’t begin to describe him but McGinn’s always been McGinn. Even by his standards, 2025/26 was a step up in measurable output.
Excluding an outlier or two, McGinn was right up there with Villa’s most prolific players for goal contributions (goals and assists).
Tammy Abraham tops the list of players with ten or more appearances but his too is a small sample size. Donyell Malen scored regularly for a while, a habit that become even clearer when he departed for Roma.
Beyond them, the usual suspects are where you’d expect them to be.
What’s noteworthy is that McGinn delivered a goal or an assist more often than Rogers. That’s not a reflection on Rogers – he is one of the most lusted-after players in the Premier League for many reasons – but it demonstrates McGinn’s importance.
Rogers was the only Villa player to create more chances in the Premier League than McGinn, and he played 1,143 more minutes than the skipper. McGinn was well clear of Youri Tielemans, who also missed a ton of games. The Belgium captain is a phenomenal footballer, lest we forget.
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Only striker and top scorer Ollie Watkins had a higher shot conversion rate in Villa’s Premier League matches.
When you breathe, I wanna be the air for you…
We need to contextualise all this information: McGinn’s numbers point to an absurd level of consistency that even he hasn’t achieved before. He was there when Villa needed him in a big, bad way.
Despite a couple of injury issues, McGinn was part of a small group of players with more than 3,000 minutes played in all competitions.
For the most part, Villa have enjoyed the benefits of a constantly available captain and warrior who makes a difference to the scoresheet as readily as he wins fouls.
McGinn has been a pleasure to watch and managed to make himself an almost universal choice for Player of the Season ahead of the five players who played much more than he did, all match-winners at both ends of the field or, in Konsa and Cash, models of reliability.
Read more…
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☠️ I don’t want Aston Villa to join the Big Six. I want them to kill it.
This was a serious, varied and persistent contribution to Villa’s best season for generations. It was tangible and not. It was direct and not. It was, simply, the kind of season we’ll be talking about for decades.
McGinn is now Brian Little, Gordon Cowans and Paul McGrath – a new Villa icon to be passed down to children and grandchildren.
McGinn might be a player whose name is still chanted at Villa Park in twenty years time. People say ‘build a statue’ as a token of appreciation but the club should absolutely commission a mural of him on one of the walls at the stadium because if Ozzy Osborne has one there then McGinn lifting a trophy is already overdue.