Aston Villa have endured a difficult opening to the season, but many of their expected rivals have problems of their own. With the Premier League's top-five race yet to take shape, Unai Emery's experience and Villa's ability to build momentum could become increasingly important.
It is still far too early in the season to make definitive judgements about the Premier League, particularly when Aston Villa have barely had an opportunity to get their new team settled, but one thing has stood out to me from watching a lot of football during the opening weeks of the campaign. Outside of Arsenal and Manchester City, I don't think anybody has established themselves as a team Villa should be looking at and thinking they cannot finish above.
That is quite important when you consider how Villa have started. It hasn't been particularly good, we all know that, and there were moments during those opening games when I was worried about how quickly everything was going to come together after such a significant summer of change. Villa needed that victory at Tottenham before the international break, but while they have been trying to find themselves, plenty of the clubs you would expect to be competing for the Champions League places have been dealing with their own problems.
Before the season started, I thought there was a real possibility that the traditional big six would reassert themselves because of the amount of money that had been spent and the changes some of those clubs had made. At this stage, I don't see it. Arsenal and Manchester City look like the two obvious sides who have the squad depth and quality to separate themselves, but after that I think it is completely open, and that leaves a massive opportunity for Villa despite the points they have already dropped.
Manchester United are one of the teams I have struggled to understand. They have obviously got talented footballers and Bruno Fernandes can produce moments that change games, but I watch them and don't always see the structure that you expect from a team trying to establish itself towards the top of the Premier League. Even when Villa have played badly under Emery, I can normally understand what they are trying to do. The execution might be wrong, the passing might be poor or individual performances might let them down, but there is usually a recognisable plan underneath it. I don't always get that impression watching United.
Chelsea are another fascinating one because there is clearly enormous attacking quality there and I thought they might even be capable of challenging right at the top this season, but they have looked incredibly inconsistent. They can produce performances where you look at their attacking players and wonder how anybody is going to cope with them, and then there are other games where the weaknesses elsewhere in the team become very obvious. Their midfield has been affected by departures and injuries, and there is enough uncertainty there that I certainly wouldn't regard a Champions League place as inevitable for them.
Tottenham are difficult to judge as well, while teams such as Brentford and Brighton continue to show the benefits of having a clear identity and players who understand exactly what is expected of them. We have seen enough Premier League seasons now to know that there will probably be one or two teams around the European positions in December that nobody expected to be there, because continuity can count for an awful lot during the first few months.
The question is whether those teams can sustain it once the season becomes more demanding. Fixtures start piling up, injuries arrive and squad depth becomes increasingly important. That tends to be the point where the clubs who have assembled deeper squads begin to move up the table, and it is one reason why I don't think we should become too obsessed with what the league looks like this early.
Liverpool are probably the team outside Arsenal and Manchester City that I would be keeping the closest eye on. They haven't necessarily been playing brilliantly, but they haven't been losing many games either, and sometimes that is enough to keep you within touching distance until everything begins to click. There is goalscoring quality there, players still to improve as the season develops and a very good coach in Andoni Iraola, even if he is also learning what it means to manage a club of that size while balancing Premier League and Champions League football.
If Liverpool find their rhythm, you can easily imagine them putting together the sort of run that suddenly moves them towards the top three or four. Equally, though, that is still something they have to do rather than something we should simply assume will happen, and the same applies to several of Villa's competitors.
That is where I keep coming back to Emery. Villa have already done this. Getting into the Champions League places in the first place was an enormous achievement because we spent years watching just how difficult it was to break into that group, but this is no longer a squad experiencing European qualification and the demands that come with it for the first time. Emery has been there before and a significant number of his players have now been through these races before.
I think that experience becomes particularly valuable if this does develop into the sort of season where several clubs remain bunched together. Frankie Maguire described it on The 1874 Podcast as potentially being a season of "late bloomers", and I think that is a good way of looking at it. There may be teams who don't really get moving until December or January and then suddenly put together the run that defines their season. Villa themselves did something similar when Emery first arrived and took a team that had been looking towards the bottom half of the table all the way into Europe.
There have already been small signs that this rebuilt side could eventually click. The Tottenham game wasn't perfect and Villa started it badly, but as it developed there were glimpses of the structures we associate with Emery beginning to return. Johan Manzambi made an immediate impact, Nicolas Jackson continued his encouraging start and suddenly some of the new pieces started to look as though they belonged together.
That doesn't mean Villa are guaranteed to go on a run, and there are still plenty of things they need to improve. They have to rediscover their home form, they need to keep key players fit and we still haven't seen enough of several members of the squad to know exactly what Emery's strongest team will eventually look like. But when I look around the league, I don't see a group of four or five clubs disappearing over the horizon while Villa are trying to rebuild.
If anything, Villa's difficult start has probably reinforced how open the opportunity remains. They haven't been at their best and yet there is no reason to look at the competition for those European places and feel intimidated by it. The teams around them have their own problems, their own new managers, their own injuries and their own questions to answer.
For me, finishing in the top five has to remain a major objective. Villa are back in the Champions League and naturally we want them to make an impact in that competition, but one of the biggest achievements they could have in Europe this season would actually be making sure they qualify to do it all over again. Establishing Aston Villa as a club that repeatedly finishes in those positions rather than occasionally breaking into them is the next stage of the journey.
There is a long way to go and plenty can change, but that is the encouraging thing about where Villa find themselves. They haven't really got going yet and neither have many of the teams they are likely to be competing against. Arsenal and Manchester City may already look a step ahead, but beyond them there is an opportunity waiting for somebody to take it.
There is absolutely no reason why that team cannot be Aston Villa.
