Arsenal stunned by best Like A New Signing in recent history as 2021 Villa transfer battle haunts them | OneFootball

A popular refrain over the last few weeks has been that only one thing can stop Arsenal this season: themselves.

In that case, Aston Villa being the team to end their 18-match unbeaten in all competitions and blow the title race wide open was painfully pertinent.

It was a victory orchestrated and overseen by Unai Emery, whose post-Wenger year-and-a-half at the helm still sends shivers down many an Emirates-adjacent spine.

It was a win delivered in no small part thanks to Emi Martinez, whose 38 appearances for the Gunners completely unironically altered the entire fabric of the sport with the deep global ramifications of his lockdown maturation still being felt well over five years after his exit.

It was a personal triumph, too, for a handful of former Arsenal transfer targets who have found their feet in this West Midlands project.

Ollie Watkins tormented the defence of the side which so infuriated Aston Villa with a perceived late and low-ball offer in January; Youri Tielemans impressed against the team with which he was linked but who were not “100% convinced” by him four summers ago; and Emiliano Buendia reinforced the career decision he made in 2021.

There remains a degree of uncertainty over how the race between Arsenal and Villa for the services of Buendia actually played out in executive boardrooms. John Percy of the Daily Telegraph once wrote that the former was ‘ultimately unwilling to match the wages on offer’ to sign the Argentinean international, while it was also claimed at the time that the Norwich playmaker ‘decided to join Aston Villa ahead of Arsenal because of their towering ambition and plans to join the Premier League elite’.

The truth might never be made public knowledge, and really no longer matters. Arsenal, Villa and Buendia are all in considerably better places than four years ago and have no reason to regret the choices or circumstances which have taken them there.

That could perhaps not have been said for Buendia until recently. The significant knee injury which sidelined him for the entire 2023/24 campaign seemed to also derail his career. Having not missed a single Premier League game of the previous season, which signalled the start of the Emery-led transformation with his appointment that November, Buendia returned to find himself on the inevitable periphery of a Champions League side which had grown without him.

A forgettable January 2025 loan to Bayer Leverkusen preceded Buendia being told he was surplus to requirements by Villa this summer. But in his own words: “It was my preference to stay here because I really feel this club is my home.”

And what a home. The hosts have won each of their last nine games at Villa Park, with Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Spurs and Paris Saint-Germain all sent on their way in defeat this calendar year alone.

That is the foundation for a genuine title push and Champions League qualification tilt which was unthinkable after the season began with a five-game winless run.

Buendia, in many ways, is the perfect representation of this Villa renaissance: a seemingly inexplicable and unforeseen metamorphosis from hopelessness into brilliance, underpinned by hard work, determination, undoubted quality and an unshakeable belief in the process.

“I’ve been working so hard, I keep working, trying to get the minutes I have, try to help like the manager asked before I came on, to bring energy, to try to put the passion in the game,” he said after his latest bench-based heroics.

Hearing that and witnessing his resurgence, it is easy to see why Arsenal thought Buendia possessed the requisite character and ability for their plans, and how his goal against them only underlined how Villa have made one of the greatest Like A New Signings of all time.