With five wins in a row and very few injuries, Aston Villa are hinting at hitting their best form just in time for the business end of the season. So, will they end their trophy drought?
It’s not time to get too excited just yet, but there are signs of the pieces falling into place for Aston Villa.
Three points off the Premier League’s top five – which should be enough for Champions League qualification – with nine games of 2024-25 remaining, Unai Emery’s side are also in the last eight of Europe’s biggest competition, and the FA Cup semi-finals following Sunday’s 3-0 win over Preston North End.
That victory extended their current run of form to five consecutive wins across three competitions with just one goal conceded as Villa set themselves up for what could be a fruitful end to the campaign. There are real indications that the team has timed a run of form perfectly to end a trophy drought that goes all the way back to the mid-1990s.
Their 1996 League Cup triumph represents the most recent piece of silverware for a club that won the European Cup as recently as 1981-82, but also spent time in the second tier just a few years ago. It’s been a turbulent time at Villa Park, but under Emery’s charge, they look like they have firmly established themselves back at the top of the game.
In truth, a second European triumph remains little more than a dream. Later this month, they face a Paris Saint-Germain side who deservedly knocked Liverpool out in the last round and could be in with a very good chance of ending their own wait for continental glory. According to the Opta supercomputer, Villa have just a 26.2% chance of making it past PSG, and a 2.6% chance of winning the whole thing.
But Emery has plenty of pedigree in Europe, having won the Europa League a record four times. He knows better than most managers what it takes to win a two-legged tie at this level, and although PSG are clearly huge favourites, they will know they should not underestimate a former manager of theirs who won seven trophies in his two seasons in France.
And even if the Champions League is a free hit in that there is no expectation Villa will go any further, there are other opportunities to make this season a huge success.
Villa breezed past Preston on Sunday to set up an FA Cup semi-final later this month against Crystal Palace. They haven’t won the competition since 1957 and, with a semi-final in which they should be favourites up next and either Manchester City, whom they have already beaten once this season, or Nottingham Forest in the final, they have a genuine chance of silverware in that competition.
Meanwhile, Villa are also very much in the race to get back into the Champions League next season despite league form that can only really be best described as ‘patchy’.
However, they have benefitted from just about everyone around them struggling to put a run of results together, and remain within one result of Man City in fifth and only a further point off Chelsea in fourth. Their best run of wins (three in a row) came back in September, and since then they have only won back-to-back games twice. All three of those runs included a win over one of the Premier League’s current bottom two sides, Southampton and Leicester. And all three of those particular wins over soon-to-be-relegated sides came by just a single goal.
In other words, Villa haven’t been very convincing all season. Mixed in among sporadic wins, they have conceded four goals at Palace and three at Tottenham, Chelsea and Newcastle. They have also dropped points against six of the bottom 10 teams, including being responsible for 18.2% of the games in which Ipswich have avoided defeat.
It has been constantly said that Villa do not have a squad deep enough to maintain a push in the Premier League alongside a European campaign. Every time their league form stuttered, the lack of depth to their squad has been cited. And that has happened quite a lot this season.
Indeed, their record in 2024-25 is significantly worse than last term. After 29 Premier League games last season, Villa were fourth in the table with 56 points; that’s five positions and 11 points better than their current situation. They had also scored almost 50% more goals at this stage of last season (60) than they have right now (41).
Injuries can at least partly explain that, though. According to premierinjuries.com, Brighton (36) are the only Premier League team to suffer more injuries that ruled a player out for at least one match this season than Villa (32).
But players are coming back, and in droves. Heading into Wednesday’s match against Brighton, Ross Barkley is the only injured absentee.
Since 28 February, Villa have progressed through two rounds of the FA Cup, beaten Club Brugge 6-1 on aggregate in the Champions League, and won 1-0 away at Brentford in the Premier League. They appear to be hitting some form just at the right time.
They face a huge month in April. After facing fellow European football chasers Brighton and Nottingham Forest, they get their Champions League tie against PSG under way, also playing Southampton and Newcastle in the league before the FA Cup semi-final against Palace at the end of the month. A few individuals are set for especially key roles.
Youri Tielemans has missed only 113 minutes in the Premier League all season, a constant presence at the base of midfield, while Morgan Rogers has proved something of a sensation following an understated arrival midway through last season. He had hardly torn up trees while at Middlesbrough in the Championship, but has proved integral to Villa this term, starting 38 of their 39 Premier League and Champions League games, and ranking second only to Ollie Watkins for both goals (10) and assists (6) across those two competitions.
In November, Rogers made his England debut, and also played in both of the World Cup qualifiers in the most recent international break.
The return to fitness of Tyrone Mings, meanwhile, has been one of the stories of the campaign. At the start of last season, the centre-back suffered the second ACL tear of his career, and it took him well over a year to return to action. Mings admitted in a recent interview with the Telegraph that during his rehabilitation, he constantly questioned whether he would ever make it back to playing.
But not only has he returned, he has become more important to the team than ever before, retaining his place in the starting XI even with Pau Torres returning from injury and Axel Disasi recruited on loan from Chelsea in January.
Villa were the Premier League’s most active club in the winter market, bringing five players in and shipping seven out either on loan or permanently. Doing so much business in the middle of the season was a real gamble because January signings often take a while to get up to speed, but it was clearly a risk worth taking.
Disasi, Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio have all made important contributions already, while Andrés García and Donyell Malen have both been given significant minutes. Rashford has four assists in a Villa shirt and scored twice in the win at Preston at the weekend, while Asensio already has seven goals for his new club.
Those two decorated and famous players in particular have inspired a vast improvement in front of goal. Villa scored 40 goals in their 27 games of the season before the turn of the year – an average of 1.48 per game – but have 32 in 18 since – an average of 1.78 per game.
It looks as though everything is coming together nicely for Emery’s men. They are the only team in England still fighting in three different competitions so, for a team apparently unprepared for a season in Europe, they appear to be doing pretty well.
Villa have battled their way into the latter stages of two major competitions and kept within touching distance in the league while dealing with a great deal of adversity in the number of injuries they’ve suffered as well as the departure of a key player in Jhon Durán, who was sold to Al-Nassr in January.
They enter a key month that could make or break their season with their form improving and things looking up. There’s plenty of obstacles still in their way, but Villa could make this season their most memorable in years.
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