Aston Villa are the best football team in Europe (for now)

Even the most optimistic die-hards wouldn't be expecting this to last, but having come so far so quickly is one of the more undersung achievements of the last couple of years.

It may be a daft system that no-one truly understands which was created solely to dramatically increase the number of Champions League matches that could be sold for TV and screw whether these extra matches actually meant anything or not—deep breath—but with three games played in its Swiss model, 36-team, group stage, Aston Villa are top of it. For the first time in more than 42 years, they are the number one team in Europe.

For now, at least. This is, of course, mild hyperbole. There are still five games to play in this already interminable feeling phase and whether they’ll still be there by the end is very much open to question. But the prognosis is looking pretty good. It’s been estimated that they may only need two more wins from their final five games to guarantee a place in the knockout stage of the competition. On the basis of what they’ve already managed in this competition already, that looks extremely achievable.

And results so far have been excellent. Three wins and three clean sheets, including teams from two of Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues. After brushing aside Young Boys—stop sniggering, you’re old enough to know better—in Bern in their opening match, they went on to beat genuine European Football Royalty Bayern Munich 1-0 in their second match and didn’t have too many difficulties getting past Bologna in their third.

Of course, at such points it is customary to invoke the spirit of the Dark Prince of European Club Football, Unai Emery. Four times winner of the Europa League with Sevilla and Villareal, Emery has so far done in the Champions League this season what he’s done so many times in its more junior competition. He has his team calm in control, and in command of a solid game plan which works. His players work hard for him. The fans are on his side and Villa Park is becoming a regular bearpit on such occasions. Something approaching a virtuous circle, in which all concerned seem to feed off each others’ positive energy, is being formed around the club at the moment.

In the Premier League, meanwhile, fourth place is a decent start, and they may even consider dropped points against Ipswich Town and—here’s a sign of the times for you—Manchester United to have been something of a disappointment. Otherwise, the only team to have taken points from them this season were Arsenal, and that was on the 24th August. They’re six unbeaten in the Premier League and only four points off the top of the table. It literally doesn’t—as in, it can’t—get much better than this.

There are, of course, still itches to be scratched. By the end of this season it will have been 29 years since they last won a major trophy. Well, they’re still in the EFL Cup, with a home match against Crystal Palace at the end of October, and the FA Cup may get to its Third Round with Villa among the favourites to win it. Obviously, domestic trophies no longer carry the currency that they once did, but to win one would be a not-insignificant milestone in the rapid progress that the club has made over the last couple of years.

Such is the pace of modern life that it can be easy to forget just home far they’ve come, and how quickly. This week marks the second anniversary of Steven Gerrard being sacked as their manager, with the club in 15th place in the Premier League table and three points above the relegation places. Two days later they beat Brentford 4-0, the surest sign possible of just how far things had declined under their former manager. Just over a week later, Emery arrived. Villa finished the season in 7th place in the table, qualifying for European football for the first time in a dozen years.

Gerrard’s sacking was the watershed moment which finally cast off a shadow that had been hanging over the club for a long time. Finishing 13th in the Championship following relegation in 2016 was probably the low point, but it took them three years to get back into the Premier League, and once back those first three years were largely attritional rather than anything else, with 17th, 11th and 14th-placed finishes indicating that after several years away the club was taking some time to acclimatise to being back.

But they survived those years and now they’re back, making clear year-on-year progress, and if anything arguably even stronger than the team that secured regular top-half finishes, regular European football, and that last trophy throughout the 1990s. Last season’s fourth place finish was, of course, was their joint-highest finish since ending first season of the Premier League in 1992/93 as runners-up to the eventual runaway winners, Manchester United.

And things are about to get tougher than they have been so far in the Premier League. November and December bring matches against Spurs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester City and Brighton, among others. Meanwhile they also face Club Brugge, Juventus and RB Leipzig in the Champions League. It’s certainly not inconceivable that they could already be through to the group stages by Christmas.

Sol why shouldn’t they dream? The last time they won the European Cup in 1982, they finished their league season in 8th place in the table. Of course, the more that European club football has come to resemble a slog than anything else the more it’s benefitted the biggest clubs, but this season hasn’t seen them have it all their own way. PSG and Bayern Munich have only won one out of three. Milan are 25th, while Atletico Madrid are 27th.

They’re pretty much top of this byzantine snake of a league on merit (and only one goal on goal difference from Liverpool, but we’ll gloss over that for now). If they can’t enjoy this moment, when can they enjoy one? Aston Villa supporters have been through some tough times, this last decade. It’s time to enjoy something better.