Aston Villa manager Unai Emery has explained why he is happy at the club despite being restricted in the transfer market

Unai Emery would "like sometimes to buy the best players in the world" but insists he is enjoying the challenge of continuing to build Aston Villa's ability to compete at the highest level.

It is four years since Emery joined Villa, and despite all the success he has enjoyed at the club during that time, including winning a European trophy and qualifying for the Champions League twice, his ability to spend freely in the transfer market remains limited.

Villa lost six key players in the summer transfer window and made a conscious decision to replace the likes of Ollie Watkins, Morgan Rogers, Youri Tielemans, Lucas Digne, Emi Martinez and Ezri Konsa with younger and, in most cases, cheaper players.

Zion Suzuki and Nicolas Jackson have arguably been upgrades on Martinez and Watkins in the first two months of the season, while Joao Gomes and Johan Manzambi have also impressed.

Villa made a slow start to the season, losing three of their opening four league matches. However, after beating Man City for the fourth consecutive time at home on Saturday, they have now won six of their last seven matches in all competitions, losing just once in their last 10.

Before the 1-0 win against Newcastle earlier this month, Emery was asked how much he was enjoying this season, given the amount of change at the club.

"More than in the last year even,” he admitted. “We are building a team in a successful way in the first year, but we did not change the squad so much. We had a lot of challenges and I was enjoying those good performances, but this year especially more because we changed more than normal.

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"We have a lot of players to understand everything, connecting with their skills and style of play to be strong and be closer to winning. How we have won against Fenerbahce, but repeating at the beginning of the press conference, we have a lot of work to do and to improve."

Indeed, while Villa’s improvement has been clear since their last defeat, against Nottingham Forest more than six weeks ago, the new-look squad have found different ways to win against the likes of Tottenham, Newcastle and Man City, as well as in the Champions League.

Ahead of facing the current league leaders, Man City, Emery spoke about the challenge of navigating financial rules while maintaining consistency.

“Every year we needed to sell some players, but we have bought players too, with potential. This summer was a little bit different; we sold more than we usually do,” Emery said.

“We were buying younger and more players than we did before. That needs time to get them to understand our demands.

“But I’m not frustrated. I like to build teams, to watch them individually and collectively to see how they progress. I’d like sometimes to buy the best players in the world! But I accept how we are doing and what is our capacity.

“But the club is doing a huge amount of effort in a lot of things in our budget. The next step forward is Villa Park and the 50,000 capacity. We are moving in the right direction, trying to be intelligent and work maybe even harder than other clubs to exploit our young players, with their talent, but I like it.”