There’s Always the Europa League
At the start of this season, after five games without a win, MOMS joked there was always the Europa League — in terms of securing passage to the Champions League. Villa recovered their league form though and went on a merciless winning run of 11 games in all competitions. Suddenly, it looked in the winter that Villa would have Champions League qualification wrapped up by Easter. Injuries came and went, Villa’s form slipped off a cliff, and 2026 just didn’t look like it was going to be Villa’s year. The old ‘there’s always the Europa League’ joke was being trotted out again.
Thankfully, last week, Unai Emery and the players locked in for the visit of Liverpool to Villa Park, which was a winner-takes-all Champions League decider in essence. Villa’s 4-2 win over Liverpool means that the Europa League isn’t needed to get a seat at the top tier of European football. Now, Villa can play simply for the pleasure of winning a long-awaited trophy.
Villa’s trip to Istanbul is their first major European final since 1982 (or 1983, if you count Villa’s Super Cup win over Barcelona). The significance of that doesn’t need qualifying. The emotional weight, the historic scale, what Emery has built from a team that was 16th in the Premier League when he arrived — none of that should be minimised. The 4-0 against Forest was one of the best nights in recent Villa memory.
The night in Istanbul could be one for the ages. The reality of the night, though, is that if they win, it will be the crowning glory of the current team. Behind the scenes, Villa will know it’s something of a full stop to the sentence of a team that has largely been unchanged since Emery arrived. In terms of minutes played in the Premier League this season, Villa have the second-oldest squad in the league, and judging by performances in 2026, it may be facing diminishing returns.
Inconstancy Warning
In the 2026, Aston Villa are 10th in the Premier League (13th before they beat Liverpool). Six wins from 18 games. They’ve lost to Fulham. Lost to Tottenham at Villa Park. Drew with a Burnley side that had won once all year and hadn’t scored at home in months. Yet, the same team dismantled Nottingham Forest 4-0 and Liverpool 4-2 with impressive performances.
The floor-to-ceiling gap of performances discussed this week on the MOMS podcast — the spectrum of inconsistency is a squad construction issue as much as anything else. When two of your most important midfielders in Boubacar Kamara and Amadou Onana, each miss over a third of the season, routinely and predictably, and your squad depth is insufficient to maintain a performance floor when they’re absent, that is a structural failure of planning and poor transfer activity. Not bad luck.
Spurs Cautionary Tale
The Spurs cautionary tale of last season also has to be considered to avoid complacency.
Spurs won the Europa League last season, yet it didn’t put them on a higher plateau the following season. It didn’t generate a jolt of momentum. The opposite in fact, it sent them into a spiral. Their structural problems — the squad, the depth, the inability to perform consistently at the level their best days suggested was possible — were not fixed by a trophy.
It’s safe to say, Villa are not Spurs. The comparison has obvious limits. Emery is not going anywhere. The ownership has backed the project, that has Emery at its core and operating as one of the best paid managers in Europe.
But the pattern of 2026 is also true. After Istanbul, the honest version of the summer conversation has to start from the 2026 form table, and not any Europa League ticker tape.
The summer cannot be framed as “build on Istanbul.” The summer has to be framed as: what does this squad need to become a side that doesn’t go four and a half months performing like a mid-table team while a European run provides cover?
Win in Istanbul and Emery becomes a five-time Europa League winner — the first manager ever. Villa will be a two-time major European trophy winning team cementing themselves as one of England’s top teams. Both are extraordinary achievements and deserve to be celebrated as such.
Afterwards though, the work starts on the next phase of Emery’s Villa.
The ceiling of this team has been visible all this and last season, and should serve Villa well in Turkey. The ceiling has never been the problem.
It’s the floor Emery needs to fix in his rebuild.
UTV
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