Why ‘Super John McGinn’ made me eat humble pie

Three years ago, I suggested how Villa could never achieve European qualification with the Scot as an important cog – how wrong I was

First, an admission. It is almost three years to the day that this reporter posted a message on social media claiming that Aston Villa may never reach their target of qualifying for Europe until John McGinn was the club’s “third or fourth best midfielder.”
Watching McGinn score his first-ever Champions League goal at Villa Park in a 2-0 win over Bologna over Tuesday night brought memories of that message flooding back.
It may not have been entirely wrong, given the prominence of midfielders such as Boubacar Kamara, Douglas Luiz (now of Juventus), Jacob Ramsey, Youri Tielemans and summer signing Amadou Onana during the Unai Emery era.
But McGinn has proved to be every bit as important as some of Villa’s flashier stars under Emery and it is time to publicly eat some humble pie over a message that serves as a personal reminder of just how quickly things can change in football.
Somebody who’s opinion I trust said to me at the start of this season that until John Mcginn is our third or fourth best midfielder, we’ll never get into Europe. I thought it sounded mad at the time, but I’m beginning to see what he meant…
Nobody better personifies Villa’s journey to the top of the Champions League table – however brief it may prove to be –than ‘Super John McGinn’, who may well go down as one of the club’s best-value signings after joining for just £2 million in the summer of 2018.
From flying cabbages in the Championship to topping the Champions League table, McGinn has seen the lot at Villa Park.
Steve Bruce rates the signing as his best recruitment call, but it was a couple of months after his move that McGinn was part of a Villa side that drew 3-3 with Preston North End, prompting a fan to throw a cabbage at the club’s former manager.
Villa were 12th in the Championship at the time, with one win in 10 games, and McGinn must have wondered what he had walked into. Only a couple of weeks earlier, the midfielder had netted his first-ever goal for the club – a volley he will probably never better – in a 2-1 home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday.
Surviving a flying cabbage proved to be Bruce’s last act as Villa manager, as he was replaced by Dean Smith and McGinn scored the club’s second goal in the Championship play-off final win over Derby County that secured an unlikely promotion to the Premier League at the end of his first season at the club.
McGinn netted Villa’s first goal back in the Premier League, in an opening-day defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in 2019, and played in the final-day draw at West Ham United that clinched survival.
The following season, the Scotland international was one of the goalscorers in the remarkable 7-2 thrashing of Liverpool. But Villa started the 2021/22 campaign badly and it was after a 4-1 home defeat to West Ham United on October 31, 2021, that this reporter lost faith and posted the aforementioned social media message.
Less than a month later, McGinn scored in Steven Gerrard’s second game in charge of Villa – a 2-1 win over Crystal Palace – but that proved to be as good as it got for him under the Liverpool legend, despite being made club captain.
When Gerrard was sacked, McGinn was dropped by caretaker manager Aaron Danks in October 2022 and did not start Emery’s first game in charge against Manchester United. By his own admission, the 30-year-old thought he was “done” at Villa.
Fast-forward two years, however, and McGinn’s renaissance has matched Villa’s. He was instrumental in the unlikely qualification for the Europa Conference League at the end of Emery’s first season in charge and last October McGinn scored his first-ever European goal by heading a late winner against Zrinjski Mostar.
That was enough to underline McGinn’s influence and yet, just over a year later, he has now gone one better by becoming a Champions League goalscorer for Villa. Is he the fourth, third, second or best midfielder at the club? Frankly, who cares. He is ‘Super John McGinn’ and that is all that really matters.