Stop looking at history, this Villa side are genuine title contenders

REPUTATION goes before you in football.

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It always has.It can be a comfort blanket or a set of handcuffs, and Aston Villa have lived with both for most of the modern era.

A big club, a proud club, a European Cup in the trophy cabinet, a great stadium and magnificent supporters — but for decades now, a sense that the really big days belonged to someone else.

Since winning the league in 1981, 44 years ago, Villa have largely been passengers in a game that has accelerated beyond them.

One FA Cup since 1920 tells its own story. And yet, here we are.

This team is good. Properly good. And more than that, they are flying.

Ten successive wins in all competitions is not an accident. It is not a lucky run, not a purple patch you explain with fixture lists and fine margins. It is the mark of a team that knows exactly what it is doing.

They are third in the league, three points behind Arsenal, and doing it without the kind of reckless spending that has become the default setting for ambition in the Premier League. Villa Park was bouncing again yesterday, and not out of nostalgia, but belief.

Unai Emery is at the heart of this. He is a very good coach, and that phrase doesn’t do him justice.

He has won. He has scars.

He rebuilt his reputation after Arsenal and went back to what he knows best building teams with structure, bravery and intensity.

What he did at Sevilla was not an accident either. His teams have a go. They are organised but not timid. They press you, they run, they compete, and when the moment comes, they hurt you.