If there had been any hype surrounding the signing of John McGinn for just over £2 million from Hibs in the week he joined it had mostly by-passed me because I was on holiday in Slovenia until the morning of the game and rushed from Birmingham airport straight to B6 for kick-off. The main topic of Villa conversation since Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens saved us from oblivion a week before I left was that Jack Grealish would not be going to Spurs for the equivalent of a pound of grapes and a pickled egg plus Josh Onomah.

McGinn’s early free-kick allowed James Chester to head home Villa’s first and his wickedly in-swinging corner forced a Wigan defender to turn the ball past his own keeper. This was, though, Steve Bruce’s Villa and two goals were never enough. Wigan duly got themselves level until deep into stoppage time when Birkir Bjarnason, who I really liked, slid in a Holte End winner.

The Scot continued to quietly impress in that stuttering start which eventually led to promotion, and it’s a real shame that his incredible left-footed volley into the top corner against Sheffield Wednesday a month later ultimately counted for nothing as Wednesday added a second to their first minute opener to take the three points. Despite that it was this goal which really announced McGinn’s arrival at Villa Park. His all-action style along with his passing ability and propensity to come of out seemingly impossible corners thanks to his almost unique ability to use his, dare I say ample, backside to help screen the ball and pivot away from opposition players.

It wasn’t until Dean Smith arrived in mid-October that we really began to see what ‘Meatball’, as Scottish fans knew him or ‘Ginny,’ as Grealish had christened him, could really do. Steve Bruce should be thanked for bringing McGinn to the club but Smith was the first Villa manager who was able to use him in the right way. Goals began to be added to McGinn’s game with two coming in a game at the City Ground in the third of Villa’s historic ten-game winning streak. Of course it was also a John McGinn goal which proved decisive in the play-off final when he beat the hesitant Derby goalkeeper to the ball after Anwar El Ghazi’s deflected speculative shot. It was, however, his ball retention at home against Blackburn late in the game, when he took the ball from one side of Villa Park to the other to run down the clock, that was my favourite McGinn memory of that season.

The last scorer for Villa as a Championship club also became the first to score as we returned to the domestic top table when he got the first of the game at Tottenham on the opening day of 2019-20. Despite defeat that day to a side who had made the Champions League final three months earlier McGinn’s performance brought him to a much wider audience. A fractured ankle in a dismal Villa Park defeat to Southampton looked to have ended the Glaswegian’s season but Covid worked in his favour as he was able to feature in the last ten games, helping Villa scrape and scrap their way to survival.

Villa of September 2020 had made themselves a different proposition to the one of only two months before as they became the surprise package of the behind-closed-doors season 2020-21. McGinn, along with Jack Grealish and Ollie Watkins, was one of the stars. He scored three goals, including one in the memorable 7-2 win over champions Liverpool, and provided six assists. More worryingly though were the twelve bookings he racked up, meaning that suspension stopped him being an ever-present in the league but McGinn had become a barometer of Villa’s form; when he played well the team did likewise and this continued into the following season.

Villa, without Grealish, struggled for form in the opening weeks of 2021-22 as Deano tried to integrate Emiliano Buendia, Leon Bailey and Danny Ings into the squad and McGinn, in his new role as vice-captain, mirrored his team’s form or vice versa. It wasn’t something he or Villa could turn around and a run of five defeats saw Smith’s term in the manager’s office come to an end.

Despite his Villa trajectory seemingly reaching a plateau McGinn turned himself into a goal machine for Scotland. Playing in a more advanced position for his national team saw the nominal midfielder score eight times in twenty three games in between March 2021 and November 2022.

Scoring was something Villa didn’t do a lot of under Smith’s replacement, Steven Gerrard. After a honeymoon period of four wins in six games up to Christmas, Gerrard could only guide Villa to six wins after Christmas to finish 14th. In the Gerrard version of Villa McGinn began to look like a journeyman who had reached his talent limit and just two more wins in eleven games at the start of 2022-23 seemed to confirm this. McGinn did, however, find himself as club captain after Gerrard took on Tyrone Mings in a popularity contest he could never win. In a perverse way this would prove a kick start for McGinn’s career. With Gerrard gone and replaced by a talented coach in the inspirational Unai Emery, Meatball’s career started to move upwards again. Playing in every conceivable midfield position at various times one of McGinn’s great Villa performances came against eventual Champions League qualifiers Newcastle in April 2023.

Playing in a then-unfamiliar right-sided role McGinn proceeded to humiliate Newcastle’s unconventional 6’7” left-back Dan Burn by matching up the defender’s physicality. By full-time in Villa’s 3-0 win Burn must have been sick of the sight of McGinn’s backside as he held off every tackle and drew foul after foul. Along with his team-mates McGinn had begun to show how important a decent coaching set-up is. The same players who had seemed destined for a relegation battle were suddenly challenging for Europe and their captain was a rejuvenated player.

It wasn’t until the following season that I fully appreciated Unai Emery’s impact on John McGinn. The relationship between the two has been described as ‘love-hate’ by the player but he can’t deny the Basque has given his career the tools it needed to progress. A stagnating footballer under Steven Gerrard has once again become the all-action utility midfielder signed in the Championship days but now at a much higher level.

In two seasons of European football John McGinn has stepped up to every level he’s needed to. In the Conference League he scored crucial goals including the last-minute header against Zrinski Mostar which won a game which had frustrated both players and fans for 89 minutes. For many Scottish players in the Premier League over the last 20 years Conference League football may have been the absolute extent of where they might have expected to play. McGinn however, with some of his peers Scott McTominay and Andy Robertson being examples, has been able to move up to play in the latter stages of the Champions League and look as though he was born to play there.

Villa’s comeback to beat this season’s deserved European champions, Paris Saint Germain, was driven by the force of McGinn’s personality and his commanding 60-yard run and thumping shot, admittedly slightly deflected, into the top corner is indicative of how Aston Villa can play under Unai Emery.

Despite being the poster boy for Unai Emery’s Villa revolution McGinn hasn’t always endeared himself to his manager. A needless sending-off in the home game against Spurs in March 2024 which ended in a 0-4 defeat could have cost us the Champions League adventure we went on to have. If I have a criticism of the John McGinn of 2025 it’s his goal return; just four this season and only one in the league but some of that is down to being asked to play in wide and often defensive positions.