Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has told Tammy Abraham he will be judged as much on his work rate as goals. Abraham was Villa’s hero last weekend, coming off the bench to score a stoppage time winner in a 4-3 victory over Sunderland which took them closer to securing a Champions League place.
It was just the 28-year-old’s second Premier League goal since joining from Besiktas in January, though both have been valuable with his first in February securing a late 1-1 draw against Leeds. Abraham has been limited to just one top flight start, with Emery instead keeping faith with Ollie Watkins up front.
And the boss explained how he had outlined his demands to the striker before last week’s match. “I told him, we need his task, working for the team,” said Emery. “When we need to fight man-to-man, that’s the most important thing I wanted to achieve with him. If he is scoring goals, that’s fantastic but the first priority is the task. He can score one goal in one minute, as he did last week, but for the other 90, we need working, running, fighting, defending. This is the need we have among the players.”
Emery has largely been satisfied with Abraham’s progress, explaining the former Chelsea man required time to adapt having returned to the Premier League after four-and-a-half years away. And he has told him to take heart in the experiences of other players, such as Youri Tielemans, who took time to find their feet at Villa. The Belgium international is now one of the club’s most important players and Emery said: “He’s a good example. The first year he was with us, he was progressively getting better and adapting with us. But he needed time. He was not involved in the starting XI every week. He was not involved in that moment. Now he is performing consistently and normally in the highest level we can want.”
Abraham scored 26 goals to help Villa win promotion from the Championship while on loan from Chelsea during the 2018-19 season. He joined Roma in 2021 and also played for Milan while in Italy. Emery continued: “He (Abraham) needed to adapt again, to the Premier League, our demands, our tactical idea. This is my explanation, making sense about Tammy Abraham. He played against Bologna 20 minutes and I told him, this is the way I want, consistency. This is the way and every day in training sessions, when we are playing, playing minutes, more or less. The most important way we are building up is our structure. We need every player to feel comfortable and confident but the most important is doing their task. Because if someone is not doing it, our weakness is bigger.”
