Returning to the number 1 tournament in Europe after 4 decades of absence, Aston Villa showed the face of an interesting "dark horse".

Coach Emery's reasonable calculation

Aston Villa are having a strange season. In the Premier League, they have been inconsistent and are currently ranked 8th. But in the Champions League , coach Unai Emery and his team have been playing brilliantly. They have reached the quarter-finals and are full of hope of advancing when their next opponent is a PSG side that is not very good.

For many mid-table teams, competing in continental competitions sometimes leads to collapse. Newcastle last season was an example. In the rare time they were able to step into the Champions League, the "Magpies" had difficulty arranging the squad and allocating their strength to the races. As a result, they "broke" both, despite playing emotionally in many matches.

In the Champions League, Newcastle played very well but unfortunately got into the "group of death" and only needed a bit of luck to get a ticket to the next round. Having spent a lot of effort but the results were not as expected, Newcastle was mentally and physically exhausted when the season was halfway through.

Aston Villa do not have a stronger squad than Newcastle, but they have the "cup king" Unai Emery. The Spanish strategist has not been very successful at big teams like PSG or Arsenal, but is extremely good with mid-level clubs. At Sevilla and Villarreal, he has brought them 4 Europa League trophies.

UEFA's format change this season seems to have helped Emery "like a fish in water". In the 8-match group stage format, each opponent only meets once, Aston Villa continuously created surprises when they beat both German giants Bayern Munich and Leipzig to enter the top 8 with only 1 point more than the chasing group.

Reasonable calculation of the board of directors

Aston Villa's board also deserve praise for their sound decisions in the transfer market.

After two consecutive summers of heavy investment, Aston Villa started to "recycle capital" from last summer. They pushed away high-value players like Douglas Luiz, Moussa Diaby to bring in players with reasonable prices like Barkley, Onana, Illing-Junior...

This winter, Aston Villa has been active again, bringing in five quality new players: Malen, Rashford, Asensio, Disasi and Andres Garcia. The total amount they had to spend was only half of the revenue from selling young player Jhon Duran (Al Nassr Club bought him for 77 million euros).

When a mid-table team like Aston Villa steps out into the continent, finances are always a big issue for them as they need to strengthen their squad and increase the players' salaries. This leads to the breakdown of the club's financial structure.

But Aston Villa's board of directors has had an extremely clever transfer policy, finding ways to sell unimportant players at high prices, while also infiltrating the transfer market to bring in quality new players at low prices.

After two transfer windows this season, Aston Villa have made a profit of more than 40 million euros - enough to increase salaries, retain key players and still be able to strengthen the team. The performance in the Champions League also has a positive impact on Aston Villa's chances in the Premier League.

With this result, it is likely that the Premier League will be allocated an additional ticket to the Champions League next season. Aston Villa only needs to finish 5th (2 points away from them) to be able to participate in the Champions League next season.

But who knows, Aston Villa could be back in the Champions League next season as champions.