Unai Emery assessed how Aston Villa are evolving at the start of the season.

The Villans earned their first victory of the campaign at Villa Park with a 6-0 rout of Fenerbahçe in midweek. Having defeated Club Brugge 3-2, they maintained a 100% winning record in Europe.

Premier League form lagging

On the other hand, affairs in the Premier League have been rougher. Their only triumph came against Tottenham just before the international break, and the side are sitting on five points in 14th place.

·‘We are building the team in the same way’

A third top five finish in four years is not out of the equation, but Villa need to continue integrating new faces efficiently. Goal contributions for Nicolas Jackson, Johan Manzambi and Ibrahim Mbaye made a positive impression in midweek, and Emery feels there is more quality to come.

“The players are doing a huge effort each match to try to do their task in our demands.

“The first demand is for myself with the coaches, how we can get our structure with the players we have and the combination with the players in the idea we need to build the team, to face, in the level, we achieved last year to be there. Until now, we didn't do it. But we are really improving, and we can see, positively, how we can get the next challenges in front of us.

“So it’s good news how we are improving: some players being injured that are joining us; some players are getting fit; some players are understanding better how we want tactically to work.

“We are building the team in the same way we did it three, two, and one years ago, but with the difficult period with some new players and young players to do this gap between the high level and the low level as fast as possible.

“The results are very important, and the results in the last matches are getting better. We lost against Nottingham Forest at home in the Premier League. After it, we won in Tottenham and we drew against Brentford.

“Of course, it was not enough but we showed some improvement. And then in the Champions League, we have started fantastically. In the Carabao Cup, we won one fantastic match as well in Coventry.

“More or less, we can use those examples to justify that we are improving. But, again, we can be realistic, about the difficult period there is still to do, working hard and improving things.