Actually, this season Aston Villa got ahead of Tottenham and left them without a CL zone. And Aston Villa is still behind the main group of leaders, but they are making good progress. I don’t know if Emery is able to compete with Arsenal and City, I think that he did not start on very equal terms with the leaders, and perhaps at the end of the season they did not have enough depth in the squad because there was a decline, but they finished the season in the top 4, which I I think this is a very good result in the conditions of such great competition.
Despite that Aston Villa started well at the beginning of the season, I did not easily believe that they could finish in the top four and qualify for next season's Champions League. My thoughts about them always were that they would decline with time. However, despite their performance declining towards the end of the season, they still made it to the top four. Honestly, they exceeded people's expectations. Their performance was impressive, considering the types of players they gathered.
I think this was not too surprising because it was expected somehow since the other competitors also declined at roughly sometime when Aston Villa had their declined though I can say how Aston Villa was going in the season was superb and the only surprising team who were still consistent like them were Spurs who was their actual competitors for this position, drastically fell especially during the season end while earlier it was understandable that they were having injury crisis but during season ending when these key players came back there were nothing really to show for it and so Aston Villa didn't have much issues finishing in top 4 while Manchester United fell off earlier in the race.
I just imagine that if Emery, their head coach, should had some of the quality players like other teams have like arsenal and Manchester City, their performance could have been even better. But let's see what will happen next season. Maybe Aston Villa will maintain their great performance and put more effort into competing with Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool.
Unai is adding more quality to the squad, let’s just continues to watch him, if he can really take Aston Villa to among the premier league big teams competing for the league which I think it's aim and he is tending to that area.
Unai Emery took his time before choosing to coach Aston Villa, I believe he has the backing of the club to get everything they can provide that he needs since he turned down Newcastle around that time because he doesn't align with the view of the Newcastle president.
Now I will love to see how far they can go in the Champions League which is still important to show how well they are improving.