MIGHTY MCGINN
Gregor Robertson lauds the Aston Villa midfielder
NOT long after John McGinn sent his second goal fizzing in off the post at the City Ground on Wednesday night, Aston Villa’s official Twitter account posted a tweet: an image of the midfield dynamo accompanied by the line, “This man is just ______”, inviting a little bit of fan participation.
The replies, as I’m sure you can imagine, were… diverse, shall we say. There was the gushing: “Phenomenal”, “Majestic”, “Dynamite”; the hyperbolic: “God”, “Iniesta’s idol”, “The Scottish Xavi”; the proud: “Ours”; the forlorn: “Missed dearly by Hibs”; and of course there was the witty: “My Dad”, “Life”, “Meatball” (we’ll come to that last one later).
Anyway, the one I pondered on during Villa’s 3-1 win at Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night, was “Bargain of the season”. And you know what? At £3m – a fee Celtic would not stretch to in the summer, much to Brendan Rodgers’ consternation – McGinn has got to be up there after what has been a truly outstanding debut Championship campaign.
McGinn may be a player with whom EFL-followers have only become acquainted this season but before arriving at Villa Park the Scotsman had already packed a fair amount into his blossoming career.
It was at St Mirren where he first came to prominence, lifting the 2013 Scottish League Cup while still a teenager, then hitting the headlines for that bizarre prank-gone-wrong when Steven Thompson accidently speared him in the leg with a training ground pole in April 2015.
The next season, his first with Hibs, he lifted the club’s first Scottish Cup in 114 years. Around 150,000 people lined the streets of Edinburgh to welcome home their heroes. The following year McGinn helped Hibs to the Scottish Championship title and promotion to the Scottish Premiership. In short, he’s a winner, and invariably so are his teams.
Scottish football: tin-pot, though, right? Well, he’s tasted European football, lifted silverware, and now represented his country too, and he’s still only 24 years old. £3m? I’m saying he’s worth at least five times that already – and rising.
Howitzer
It didn’t take McGinn long to endear himself to the Villans. The first two of eight assists this season arrived on his debut against Wigan in August. And that absolute howitzer of a volley against Sheffield Wednesday in September lit up Villa Park.
But it is his tireless running, his almost giddy dynamism that makes him so popular and valuable. For the opposition, he’s a menace: a bustling bundle of energy who snaps into tackles yet marries that competitive edge with a silken touch when required.
Sometimes he’s a little too eager. Five bookings by October yielded a one-game ban and reaching ten saw him miss the recent draw with Stoke City and thrashing of Derby County.
Dean Smith said after McGinn’s match-winning display on Wednesday night that it was a tough decision dropping Glenn Whelan for the Scotsman – but, in truth, Villa are twice the team with him in it, as Smith well knows.
Willingness
His first goal owed to his willingness to chase lost causes: a hopeful channel ball was ferreted after and, having reached the ball before Jack Colback, McGinn chopped inside and drilled his shot beneath Costel Pantilimon, the Forest goalkeeper, from an acute angle. His second was a left-footer uncorked from 25 yards and he could quite easily have completed a hat-trick in the second half.
Jack Grealish may be Villa’s Golden Boy; one of their own. Tammy Abraham leads the goalscoring charts. Conor Hourihane has more assists. But head down to Villa Park, or listen to the throngs who follow the Villa around the country, and whose name is chorused most audibly? “We’ve got McGinn, super John McGinn, I just don’t think you understand…” is how it goes.
Yet here’s the rub: the fear, already, is for how long? If Villa fail to return to the top flight this season the circling vultures will surely swoop and it may turn out to be a whirlwind, if memorable, romance.
Let’s not forget, Villa have a fine line to tread with Financial Fair Play regulations. Their recently released accounts showed a loss of £32 million for last season and this is their last tranche of parachute payments. Grealish is the prized asset but McGinn isn’t too far behind.
Whatever comes next, though, you get the impression that McGinn will simply take it in his stride. Evidently, he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Earlier this season an unflattering portrait from the FIFA video game went viral on social media so McGinn uploaded it as his Twitter profile picture.
Team-mates and friends call him “Meatball”, although quite why is still something of a mystery! A mischievous smile is never far away though and he is clearly as popular in the dressing room as he is among supporters.
There would, of course, be plenty of candidates for bargain of the season in the Championship. Joe Lolley, who joined Forest from Huddersfield for about £1.5 million, wouldn’t be far behind. Norwich nabbed Emi Buendia for the same sum and Teemu Pukki on a free from Brondby wasn’t a bad deal for the Canaries either!
But for me it’s Villa’s indomitable, indefatigable, adventurous No7: John McGinn. This man is just _____.