Champions League Contention

[Brazilian Villain]

Definitely in contention for top 4.  I'm too Villa to consider the league as realistic prospect, we need to become a better team away from home.  Although the result away at Bournemouth is beginning to look better by the game.  3 wins and a draw out of that run of games is beyond my wildest expectations, never would have thought we could beat both City and Arsenal in one week.  Heady times, indeed.

Same here, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be looking at the same return from the next 4 games. However, the Villa fan in me is still saying we're bound to slip up against Sheff Utd or Burnley, having won the two 'big' games.

[Smithy]

Definitely in contention for top 4.  I'm too Villa to consider the league as realistic prospect, we need to become a better team away from home.  Although the result away at Bournemouth is beginning to look better by the game.  3 wins and a draw out of that run of games is beyond my wildest expectations, never would have thought we could beat both City and Arsenal in one week.  Heady times, indeed.

Same here, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be looking at the same return from the next 4 games. However, the Villa fan in me is still saying we're bound to slip up against Sheff Utd or Burnley, having won the two 'big' games.

My thoughts too, but that's because we're simply not used to this.  I hope, in time, it will come, and we'll start looking at games like those you mention in expectation rather than hope.  We are going to have a bad run between now and the end of the season, everyone will, I just hope ours remains a blip while our general trajectory remains upwards.

Fighting for the champions league places right to the end of the season would be excellent progress, and something we would all have gladly taken before a ball was kicked, but remaining in touching distance of the title fight would be lovely.  It's nice to dream, but on a more practical level, it helps the club commercially, and will make Monchi's job a bit easier if the football world sees us up there in the top four and beating the regular champions league qualifiers.

[Footy-Vill]

Garth Crooks:
"However, talk of winning the title is sheer fantasy. There's more chance of Prince William taking charge of Villa's remaining fixtures than them winning the Premier League"

[Footy-Vill]

Aston Villa are up to third in the Premier League table, two points behind leaders Liverpool.

Aston Villa have upended the Premier League’s paradigm
Under Unai Emery, could the club turn the league title into a four-way race?

These are heady days for Aston Villa. Everybody suspected they were underperforming under former coach Steven Gerrard, but nobody perhaps quite expected the lift-off that has happened under Unai Emery. It’s not just that they sit third in the table, two points off the top, it’s the fact that in their past two games they have beaten last season’s top two.

The assumption is that, at some point, they will stumble, and talk of them being in a title race is always delivered in tones that acknowledge that, but whether that happens or not, the performance in beating Manchester City last Wednesday was one of the most striking the Premier League has ever known. It may only have finished 1-0, but Villa battered City – xG models had the hosts up 2.33 to City’s 0.86. This wasn’t about being clever and picking off their opponents on the break, or surviving a sustained spell of pressure: for all but about 15 minutes just after half-time (in which period City didn’t have a shot), Villa overwhelmed them. Nobody has ever dominated City to that extent in a Premier League match.

As such, there was a sense of paradigms shifting. It’s always been said that teams have to be almost perfect to beat City, and to hope that Pep Guardiola’s side have an off-day but Villa won despite being quite wasteful in front of goal and despite Ederson having a fine game. There is the obvious caveat that this was a City missing a number of key players, that they started the game with John Stones and Manuel Akanji as the two deep-lying midfielders, but it was an extraordinary performance nevertheless. Nobody should be overcome with sympathy if a state-run club hasn’t bought itself a big enough squad, particularly given Kalvin Phillips, Matheus Nunes and Mateo Kovacic, $125m-worth of central midfielders, sat on the bench.

There comes a point in the life-cycle of every great team when opponents stop fearing them. City had drawn three in a row before the defeat to Villa and it feels like this run may have diminished some of that aura from Guardiola’s side. That doesn’t mean that they won’t go on to win a sixth league title in seven years or that they’re in some sort of terminal decline. But it does mean that, at least for a while, there may be fewer games in which opponents, even if only subconsciously, almost accept a two- or three-goal defeat before kick-off.

City have a relatively gentle run of fixtures coming up – Newcastle are the only side currently in the top half they will face before the Manchester derby at the beginning of March – but those games may be a little more competitive than they would otherwise have been. That’s especially true if Erling Haaland is out for a protracted period with an injury, although Guardiola said a “bone stress reaction” in the Norwegian’s foot did not mean a fracture. City were far from their best in beating Luton 2-1 on Sunday, but perhaps the most significant thing was the resilience they showed having fallen behind.

Although Villa beat Arsenal by the same 1-0 scoreline, the game was very different. Having taken an early lead, Villa were under pressure for long periods, but Arsenal found former goalkeeper Emi Martínez in fine form, might have had a penalty when Douglas Luiz kicked the underside of Gabriel Jesus’s boot as the two went for the same bouncing ball, and had an equaliser ruled out (correctly under the law as it currently stands) after the ball had brushed Kai Havertz’s hand. But, not for the first time away from home, they looked a little toothless, lacking in ruthlessness.

Arsenal lost the leadership of the Premier League but there was perhaps some consolation in the fact that although their trips to Villa and Luton this week ended up in the same outcome as City’s – a one-goal defeat and a one-goal win – they looked more fluent than the champions in both games.

As for Villa, amid the euphoria, there may be some concerns about just how fatigued they appeared towards the end of the Arsenal game, while if they are to sustain a title challenge, their away form needs to improve. They’ve dropped 13 points away this season, although that is a feature of top sides: Arsenal have dropped eight on the road, and Liverpool, who were far from impressive in winning at Crystal Palace on Saturday, like City, have dropped 11.

All of which is great news for the competitiveness of the Premier League. Fallibility, the sense that nothing is guaranteed, that every point must be fought for, is what sustains a league. City are three points worse off than after 16 games last season, but they are three points nearer the leaders. Last season at this stage the top five were separated by 13 points; this season it’s seven. A blanket finish is unlikely, but even to have three sides still battling for the title at the beginning of May would be a rare treat.

Could Villa be one of them? The suspicion is that their relatively slim squad will count against them, or that somebody will work out their offside trap, but that performance against City means that nobody can dismiss them.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/dec/11/aston-villa-unai-emery-premier-league-title-race

[Footy-Vill]

Aston Villa - Title contenders until they aren’t. That’s now 15 home Premier League wins in a row, a statistic that would be absurd for your Citys and Liverpools, never mind a club that was trying to avoid getting dragged into a relegation fight when appointing Unai Emery barely a year ago.

Midweek victory against Manchester City was followed by another against Arsenal as Villa took down the two likeliest contenders for the title in the space of four days and squared a circle: Arsenal were the last team to take league points away with them from Villa Park after two late goals sealed a 4-2 win in February. Villa’s previous home game was another 4-2 defeat to ultimately relegated Leicester. It wasn’t something that screamed ’15 consecutive wins’ but Villa under Unai Emery have become a nonsense.

Logic tells you they can’t possibly sustain a title challenge, but this is already showing hugely promising signs of being one of those rogue seasons where Manchester City aren’t quite infallible. There are unexpected opportunities out there this season; everyone has flaws. Villa’s are currently less prominent or conspicuous than most.


Unai Emery
He doesn’t seem the sort to see it remotely this way, but Emery pipping Arsenal to the Premier League title is a narrative we can get behind. We wonder if he still thinks there are seven teams with better chances of winning the Premier League, though, because we’ve looked and looked and can see, at best, maybe three. Well definitely three. But also definitely no more than three.

Source: Football365

[Footy-Vill]

Aston Villa 1-0 Arsenal: 16 Conclusions on the Prem title favourites and the team they beat
If you weren’t already, it’s probably time to take Aston Villa seriously as legitimate Premier League title challengers. But Arsenal should have won that.

https://www.football365.com/news/opinion-16-conclusions-aston-villa-arsenal-emery-mcginn-odegaard

[Footy-Vill]

Micah Richards on McGinn " It's so good for him that he doesn't need to move - he's in a team that's fighting for the title.

Anytime I hear Aston Villa now the title is mentioned!
It's progressed on from champions league talk to now levels of do you want to bet against us!

[Footy-Vill]

Aston Villa have earned 35+ points after 16 games of a top-flight campaign for the fifth time (counting 3pts per win all-time)

1898-99 - Champions
1899-00 - Champions
1910-11 - 2nd
1980-81 - Champions

I mean this says✅ it all!

[Steve67]

Micah Richards on McGinn " It's so good for him that he doesn't need to move - he's in a team that's fighting for the title.

Anytime I hear Aston Villa now the title is mentioned!
It's progressed on from champions league talk to now levels of do you want to bet against us!

People still have that disbelief and trying to sell our players. The truth is, not even Manchester City can afford SJM.

[Dave]

Get the hotels booked now I reckon

[maidstonevillain]

Micah Richards on McGinn " It's so good for him that he doesn't need to move - he's in a team that's fighting for the title.

Anytime I hear Aston Villa now the title is mentioned!
It's progressed on from champions league talk to now levels of do you want to bet against us!

People still have that disbelief and trying to sell our players. The truth is, not even Manchester City can afford SJM.

In a similar vein, a recent Teamtalk article  was about ManUs January transfer raid for Watkins, and how he would be the ideal striker for them.

The final paragraph was refreshing.

"Nevertheless, United are not the lure they once were and many will argue that from a purely footballing perspective, leaving Villa Park for Old Trafford would be a backwards step."

[Drummond]

The format is changing next season isn't it? It's going to be the Swiss League style so all 32 teams in one league and they play 8 games each against others in the table, with the top 8/16 (can't remember which) progressing to knockout phase.

[Bully2345]

32 teams. Top 8 qualify and advance straight to Last 16.

The next 16 teams contest a play off round to reach the last 16 (presumably seeded according to finishing positions).

8 teams eliminated completely from competition (no parachuting to the Europa League)

[Drummond]

Excellent, thanks.

[Brazilian Villain]

Get the hotels booked now I reckon

We'd probably get PSG, Rangers and Atlético Madrid.