Unai Emery’s response to questions about Aston Villa’s home form has been blunt. “No excuses,” said the Villa head coach, speaking about his team’s results while Villa Park undergoes a major rebuild — a remark that followed a notably frank assessment of their defeat to Nottingham Forest last month.
The source of the disruption is the North Stand, which now stands as a shell and is closed while the club works to increase Villa Park’s capacity to more than 50,000. The project is part of Villa’s broader plan to close the financial gap in the Premier League, and the club accepts it may mean short-term pain for long-term gain. The rebuild is due to be completed next year.
In the meantime, Villa have been unable to win at home this season, a run extended by Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Brentford. Nicolas Jackson’s equaliser against the Bees was the first home goal Villa had scored in front of the skeletal North Stand this term. Champions Arsenal and Nottingham Forest have both already taken three points at Villa Park, while unbeaten Brentford left with one. Capacity has dropped to around 37,000.
Emery does not deny the effect, even as he refuses to hide behind it. “Our handicap is less supporters for the situation, but the club decided it. It is something to improve us for the future,” he said. “We must try to be together and without 7,000 supporters we must push everyone. We must play better football, compete better, be more focused. Those are more important than the stand.” He added that the club is being realistic about its work and improvement, with plenty of conversations, meetings, video sessions and training, while conceding things are “not [good] enough yet”.
Defender Matty Cash struck a similar tone, and was candid about the atmosphere the construction has created. “Over the last few years our home form has been amazing, especially in Europe,” he said. “We need to get back to that. I don’t want to sound like I am making excuses, because obviously we have to deal with the circumstances and it is really good to make the stand bigger and the stadium bigger, but it is obviously different. I am not going to sit here and lie and say it isn’t but you have to deal with the circumstances. You can’t make excuses. You have to play what is in front of you. When it is done it will be amazing but yeah, at the moment it is a bit different.”
The contrast with Villa’s recent home record is stark. Since Emery’s arrival almost four years ago, Villa Park has been a fortress. Between November 2022 and January 2026 they lost just eight of 61 home Premier League games, winning 44, a run that included 15 straight victories between March 2023 and December 2023 and a 12-month unbeaten stretch in the top flight between August 2024 and August 2025. Since the turn of the year, though, that aura of invincibility has faded. Defeats by Everton, Brentford, Chelsea and Tottenham threatened their top-four place last season, and Villa needed late goals to draw with Leeds and to beat Brighton and Sunderland. Brentford boss Keith Andrews has also noted the reduced ground, saying he hated playing when one stand was missing.
Europe has been a different story, and it offers Emery’s side a chance to change the mood. Villa have lost only once at home in Europe under the Spaniard — against Olympiacos in the 2024 Europa Conference League semi-final — and he ended the club’s wait for silverware by lifting the Europa League in May. Fenerbahce now visit Villa Park on Wednesday as Champions League football returns, bringing with them Marcos Asensio, who scored eight goals for Emery’s men during a successful loan from Paris St-Germain in 2025 and is a reminder of the swagger Villa once had at home. Asensio scored in Saturday’s 3-0 win over Rizespor, and Fenerbahce have netted 11 goals in their last two games, including an 8-0 win over Turkish Super Lig strugglers Eyupspor. That is a considerable test for a Villa defence with just one clean sheet this season, one that has grown increasingly fallible at home regardless of the rebuild. Viking are also due in Birmingham for the league phase on 21 October, and after an opening win at Club Brugge, successive victories would put Villa on course for qualification before November.
“It is a massive test against a good team but we need to be winning these games,” Cash said. “That is the bar we have set for ourselves. Hopefully we can make it loud — three-stand loud.”