Aston Villa under the guidance of Unai Emery has developed rapidly since last season and has become a challenger to the giant EPL clubs Liverpool, Arsenal and Man City but in the end he finished in 4th place which was a fairly satisfactory result last season, and this season his performance in the EPL is still quite good even though he is in 9th place temporarily but he has the same points as Fulham but in the UCL he achieved good results in 3 matches and only suffered 1 defeat so it is natural that his performance in the EPL has decreased slightly this season but overall his performance has not completely decreased he can still be a challenger to the top clubs.
Considering they are 9th but with just one point difference from the third, they are really not doing that badly. Not really a proper 9th place, and that is why we could see them do fine, we could see them get a lot further, and potentially still finish fourth place. Unai Emery has been a great coach so far, and I bet that next place he will go to will be a major club, he deserves it.
I honestly thought Bayern would hire him this summer, but instead they got Kompany, which made no sense to me. If you switched places, Kompany would have made Villa at best 10th place, maybe worse, and Umai wouldn't get relegated for sure. In the end, next time he leaves, thanks to all he did with villareal and Villa, both have villa in the name I am just realizing that lol, he will go to a great club.