I will choose Aston Villa as the favorite team to win the European Conference League this season. It is very reasonable to place Unai Emery fleet at the top of the list, because of their consistency in the Premier League which has been able to stay in the top four of the standings so far. Man City, Chelsea and Tottenham are the three elite EPL teams that Aston Villa have beaten this season, so I think Ajax will be beaten too.
We know that Ajax experienced very difficult ups and downs in performance in the Eredivisie, they have not even managed to break into the top four at the moment, which could lead them to qualify for the qualifying round for the European Conference League next season. On paper, Aston Villa have all the attributes to make their move smooth, and in my opinion they deserve to be favourites.
From a domestic league point of view, we certainly know that the EPL is in first place as the most competitive league in Europe, very different from the Eredivisie. In this case, the Dutch representative will find it very difficult to beat Aston Villa, and Ajax even be unable to compete with Brighton and Marseille in Group B of the Europa League.
From what I see, several teams still have opportunities because in terms of quality, several teams are quite strong. Fenerbahce, Fiorentina also cannot be underestimated because they also have the ambition to reach the final in the European conference league. But for that reason, Aston Villa performance may be better than other teams because Aston Villa managed to cause many surprises in the domestic league and I think they deserve to be a strong candidate to win the title.
Apart from that, Aston Villa also has a strong opponent because they will face Ajax in the round of 16. Meanwhile, Fiorentina will face Maccabi Haifa. Well, in my opinion, Fiorentina opponent is also quite strong because Maccabi currently leads the standings in their domestic league. For this reason, several strong teams need to struggle to be able to beat their opponents in the round of 16.