Madjo, Kamara and the Calendar That Could Shape Villa’s Season

The international calendar has given Aston Villa an unusual trade-off. AFCON will not take Nicolas Jackson and Ibrahim Mbaye away in the middle of the season, but its qualifying schedule interrupts a team still learning how to play together. At the same time, Jackson’s workload is growing, Brian Madjo’s absence has quietly removed an important alternative, and Boubacar Kamara’s numbers suggest his role is changing. For Unai Emery, the next few months may be as much about preserving his best players as selecting them.

By Nico Valenti

Nicolas Jackson’s goal at Tottenham contained a small clue about where Aston Villa might eventually find another version of themselves.

Zion Suzuki went long. Jackson brought the ball down, Johan Manzambi arrived close enough to take the next pass, returned it immediately and Jackson finished a move that had travelled from goalkeeper to goal without Villa needing to establish their usual build-up. It was excellent centre-forward play from Jackson and another glimpse of the relationship developing between him and Manzambi, but the route there was interesting too. Villa had gone over Tottenham’s pressure and still produced a controlled attack at the other end.

There will be evenings this season when that becomes necessary.

Jackson has quickly provided some reassurance after the upheaval of the summer. His movement at Brugge was encouraging and Tottenham was better again, with the run, combination and finish for his goal perhaps the clearest example yet of how he can lead this rebuilt attack. His willingness to sprint into channels also changes the position of the players behind him. Manzambi suddenly has somewhere to play early. Mbaye can attack the opposite side. Buendía can arrive into spaces Jackson has helped open.

It is also an expensive way to play football physically.

Jackson’s value comes partly from the amount he asks of himself. The first run may stretch a centre-back, the next takes him towards the ball and the third attacks the space created by the first two. Add pressing, contact with centre-backs and the repeated accelerations demanded of a forward in Emery’s team and his workload cannot sensibly be measured only by starts and minutes. There is a disciplinary element as well. At Forest, a first-half booking and a warning from the referee were enough for Emery to decide at half-time that keeping him on had become an unnecessary risk.

This is where Brian Madjo has quietly become rather important.

The relief surrounding Jackson’s encouraging performances has made it easy to forget that Emery will have another genuinely unusual centre-forward available to him. Madjo is only 17, but Villa did not spend around €12m bringing him from Metz because they needed another academy body. He had already made five Ligue 1 appearances before arriving in Birmingham and had become the first player born in 2009 to start a match in one of Europe’s five major leagues. 

His competitive Villa debut then came against Paris Saint-Germain in the Super Cup, when he played 72 minutes, attempted six shots and scored. UEFA recorded a top speed of 30.43km/h and 8.15km covered during those 72 minutes.

Madjo helps to change the route

Madjo’s physical profile gives Emery something the squad otherwise possesses only in fragments. He can occupy a centre-back, compete for an early ball and provide a reference point much higher up the pitch. He has also spent part of his development playing deeper, which helps explain why his game is more mobile than the dimensions initially suggest.

Villa have spent much of Emery’s tenure refining how they invite pressure and escape through it. Pau Torres stepping forward, Kamara showing underneath, a full-back changing height and the attacking midfielders positioning themselves beyond the press are all parts of that machinery. There is considerable value in doing it well. There is also value in an opponent not knowing Villa will do it every time Suzuki gets the ball.

We know Suzuki has the range to change the point of attack immediately. We saw it at Tottenham: one long delivery into Jackson, a lay-off to Manzambi, the return pass and Villa were attacking the penalty area. Madjo potentially makes those deliveries a more regular tactical option because the first contest itself can become productive.

The important bit is what happens around him. A long pass towards a big striker with nobody close enough to collect the second ball is just a clearance with ambition. Put Manzambi underneath Madjo, Mbaye running beyond him and Gomes stepping onto the loose ball, and it becomes a pattern.

Emery would effectively gain another exit from pressure.

There are opponents against whom that could be particularly useful. Champions League teams will increasingly study Villa’s first phase. Some will push three or four players onto the build-up and try to lock Suzuki into short passes. If Madjo can pin a centre-back 40 yards further forward, Villa can occasionally ask that press a very different question. Even an unsuccessful long pass can be useful if the contest takes place around the halfway line with Gomes, Kamara or Manzambi positioned for the second ball.

It also offers something later in games. Villa protecting a lead could move 20 yards up the pitch without needing to construct every escape. Villa chasing one could put Madjo against tired centre-backs and surround him with runners. His importance is therefore bigger than the number of starts he is likely to make.

His current absence has removed that option just as the fixture list is beginning to demand it.

Jackson’s best performances make Madjo more important, not less

There is an understandable temptation to respond to Jackson’s impressive start to the season by playing him whenever possible. The calendar argues against it.

Villa have already played the Super Cup, Premier League, Champions League and League Cup before September has finished. From October the rhythm becomes much more severe. Fenerbahçe visit on 14 October, Newcastle follows on the 17th, Viking on the 21st and Manchester City on the 24th. November contains Barcelona away on the 3rd, Manchester United away on the 7th and, after the international break, Sunderland on the 21st followed by Galatasaray in Istanbul three days later.

December brings another run of domestic fixtures around Paris Saint-Germain at Villa Park.

There will be injuries. There will be bookings. There will be games in which Jackson has spent an hour repeatedly sprinting against a high defensive line and another match arrives three days later. Madjo does not have to displace him. He has to absorb some of that load.

Twenty minutes here, a League Cup start there, perhaps an hour in a league fixture before a major European night: those are valuable minutes because they are minutes Jackson does not have to play. Over a season the difference between asking a first-choice striker for 4,000 minutes and finding 700 or 800 credible minutes elsewhere can become enormous.

Tammy Abraham is part of that equation too, but Coventry illustrated why the alternatives need not be interchangeable. Abraham scored twice, yet had only 18 touches in 69 minutes and completed six of 11 passes. His penalty-box instincts remain useful. Jackson offers much more movement around the attack. Madjo could eventually give Emery something between and beyond those two profiles: a physical focal point capable of turning direct possession into a platform for the quicker players around him.

There is another small advantage in having three different centre-forwards. Emery can choose them according to the game instead of treating the alternatives as weaker copies of Jackson. A centre-back who has spent 70 minutes following Jackson into channels may not particularly enjoy spending the final 20 wrestling with Madjo.

That is depth with a purpose.

AFCON has moved — the disruption has not

The international calendar complicates all of this in an unusual way. The traditional concern around African internationals is the winter. This season that problem has effectively disappeared. The 2027 Africa Cup of Nations is scheduled for the summer, so Villa are not facing the prospect of losing Jackson and Mbaye for a block of Premier League and European fixtures in December and January.

That is an enormous benefit.

The price is less visible. AFCON qualifying is being played across three international periods: the current September/October window, 9–17 November, and 22–30 March.  Jackson and Mbaye are part of Senegal’s picture, while Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s involvement with DR Congo adds another Villa player exposed to the African qualifying calendar.

The November window demonstrates the strange trade particularly well. Villa play Manchester United on 7 November and Sunderland on 21 November, so the international break itself does not currently remove those players from a league fixture. Four days after Sunderland, however, Villa are in Istanbul to face Galatasaray.

A fortnight without club football will not mean a fortnight of recovery. Jackson could leave Villa after Manchester United, travel with Senegal, train and play international football, travel back to Birmingham and then face the prospect of Sunderland and Galatasaray within four days. Mbaye has the same problem at 18. Wan-Bissaka may return from DR Congo duty into a competition for minutes with Cash, which at least gives Emery an obvious means of managing him.

For Jackson, the alternative is less straightforward while Madjo is unavailable.

That is why the young striker’s importance has probably been understated. Villa have avoided the dramatic version of the AFCON problem — losing their first-choice striker for several winter matches — but they still have to manage the accumulated cost of international football. Madjo is one of the players who can turn that cost into rest.

There is a paradox here too. International breaks take some of Emery’s most important attackers away just as their relationships are developing, but they give him concentrated time with those left behind. For a squad rebuilt so extensively during the summer, that can resemble another fragment of pre-season. The challenge is that the players most in need of learning each other — Jackson and Mbaye among them — may be the ones leaving Bodymoor Heath.

Emery has to build a team in instalments.

Kamara is changing too

Boubacar Kamara sits at the other end of this argument because his importance is almost the inverse of Jackson’s. Jackson makes himself visible through movement. Kamara often improves Villa by making things not happen.

His return from the ACL injury suffered in February 2024 has inevitably invited comparisons with the player who existed before it. The raw numbers are interesting, although they need treating carefully because his availability, partners and responsibilities have changed substantially.

In the 2023/24 Premier League season before the ACL injury, Kamara made 43 tackles and 20 interceptions in 1,652 minutes. After returning, his 2024/25 league season produced 51 tackles and 16 interceptions in 1,726 minutes; last season he recorded 34 tackles and 15 interceptions in 1,411 minutes.  Converted to 90 minutes, that is roughly 3.43 tackles plus interceptions per 90 before the injury, 3.49 in 2024/25, and 3.13 last season.

That does not look like a footballer whose defensive game collapsed after a major knee injury.

There are changes underneath it. His 2023/24 league season brought seven yellow cards and a red in only 20 appearances. In 2024/25 he received just two yellows in 26 league appearances; last season it was five in 18.  Some of that is normal season-to-season variation, but it fits the visual impression of a midfielder who has gradually become more selective about when he leaves his position.

This season’s sample is tiny — four Premier League matches — and should be treated accordingly. Yet one early measure is interesting: his overall defensive-contribution rate has fallen from 9.51 actions per 90 last season to 7.50 so far.

João Gomes changes the division of labour. At Tottenham, Gomes could chase a loose ball, attack a duel or follow an opponent because Kamara was still occupying the space behind him. It allowed one midfielder to behave aggressively without forcing the other to join him. Villa suddenly had a hunter and a holder.

Kamara has spent significant periods of his Villa career being both.

That distinction matters when judging the post-injury version of him. Counting tackles alone can reward a midfielder for having problems to solve. Emery may now be trying to reduce how many problems Kamara has to solve in the first place.

At his best, he is standing in the way of a pass an opponent wanted to play, holding the position that allows a full-back to advance, or remaining five yards deeper so Gomes can attack the next duel. None of those actions necessarily appears in a tackle column. All of them change what the players around him can do.

The Tottenham game was perhaps the clearest recent expression of it. Gomes produced the eye-catching defensive volume; Kamara provided the reference point underneath him. When Kamara and McGinn were removed together after 84 minutes, Villa’s distances became less secure and Spurs scored twice in the closing stages. That sequence cannot be reduced to Kamara leaving the pitch, but it offered a neat reminder of the things his presence quietly organises.

For Emery, protecting that player matters just as much as protecting Jackson.

The minutes Villa can avoid may matter as much as the ones they play

The modern schedule encourages us to count games. Emery has to think in physical actions. Jackson can play 90 minutes in two very different ways: one might contain long periods of controlled possession, another 30 high-intensity runs against a defence holding the halfway line.

Kamara can complete the same number of minutes while either sitting behind Gomes or spending the afternoon covering an unstable midfield. International duty adds travel, training and matches whose intensity Villa cannot control.

The squad therefore needs to create what might be called cheap minutes.

If Madjo can play the final 25 minutes with Villa 2-0 ahead, Jackson saves another collection of sprints and collisions. If Gomes can take more of the aggressive defensive work, Kamara does not have to make every recovery himself. If Cash and Wan-Bissaka can alternate according to the opponent, neither has to absorb the whole schedule. Mbaye, Alysson, Manzambi and Garnacho offer similar possibilities further forward once Emery trusts the combinations.

There is a tactical benefit alongside the physical one. Rotation is easier when the replacement changes the question instead of attempting an inferior version of the same answer. Madjo can make Villa more direct. Cash can make the right side more aggressive. Wan-Bissaka can make it more secure. Gomes can hunt while Kamara holds. Mbaye can stretch a defence that Buendía would prefer to move through.

The next few months will test whether Emery can use those differences without losing the structure that holds them together.

Villa’s Champions League calendar alone includes Fenerbahçe, Viking, Barcelona, Galatasaray and PSG before Christmas, alongside a Premier League programme that runs straight through the festive period.  The African internationals will not disappear for a winter AFCON, which is a considerable piece of good fortune. They will still accumulate international miles, and the domestic calendar will eventually demand choices before injuries make them compulsory.

That is why Madjo’s recovery matters more than Jackson’s recent performances might suggest. It is why Gomes’ arrival may prolong Kamara’s effectiveness by changing the work asked of him. And it is why the international breaks are not empty spaces between the important parts of Villa’s season.

Emery finally has a squad containing different solutions. The next stage is learning how often he can use them, how much football his key players genuinely need to play, and when the best decision for the next match is to protect someone for the one after it.

By spring, Villa’s strongest XI will obviously matter. How rarely Emery has been forced to exhaust it may matter almost as much.