Matt Maher: No margin for error in the battle to join Premier League elite

The prevailing mood is the future is bright, regardless of whether this season ends with a return to European competition secured.

A couple of bold, high-profile appointments would appear to back up that view. Mateu Alemany has been convinced to depart his post as Barcelona’s director of football a year earlier than planned to strengthen Villa’s recruitment department, while former Philadelphia 76ers president Chris Heck has also been targeted for a senior off-field role.

Quite what job Heck would take is uncertain at this stage but his reputation as a commercial expert suggests he would be tasked with helping close the considerable revenue gap, mentioned more than once before in this space, which exists between Villa and the Premier League’s Big Six.

Public utterances from billionaire owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens are rare. Yet the encouraging conclusion to be drawn from their actions is that, far from having become disillusioned by the challenge after four years back in the top flight, the pair remain keen as ever to try to crack the elite. Results from the first six months of Unai Emery’s reign as head coach will have convinced them they have the man capable of taking the fight to the big boys on the pitch.

Yet for all the justified positivity, a stark reminder of how difficult it is to decisively make the jump – and how much easier it is for aspiring clubs to fall back the other way – can currently be found sitting in the relegation zone.

Just a couple of years ago, Leicester were the blueprint for every Premier League pretender to follow. Champions against all the odds in 2016, their success had been sustained through to an FA Cup win and two consecutive top-five finishes under Brendan Rodgers which prompted some observers to proclaim the Foxes members of a new “Big Seven”.

And now, in what feels like the blink of an eye, they face the very real threat of demotion to the Championship, after a demise precipitated by a few mere momentary lapses in judgement, a series of small errors which have added up to one big problem.

The tag you really want to avoid in the Premier League is of being the “model club”. Typically bestowed on a mid-ranking outfit which through shrewd management rises to challenge the elite, more often than not it spells disaster in the long run. A decade ago, Albion’s blueprint to follow. Then, after four consecutive top-eight finishes, including a sixth place in 2016, it was Southampton. Can you spot the pattern emerging? Brighton, be warned.

None soared so high as Leicester, who stunned the world thanks to the savvy recruitment of Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante and sustained it with the likes of James Maddison and Youri Tielemans, future signings always funded by the huge profits made on previous trading, with Harry Maguire (signed for £17million, sold for £80m) the prime example.

But then, at some point, the wheel stopped turning. The policy of selling one key player a year halted in summer 2021, while those signed delivered diminishing returns. Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard, who arrived for fees totalling around £60m, have contributed little. Each miss in the transfer market adds up. Earlier in the spring, the Foxes posted losses of nearly £100m for the previous financial year.

The lesson here is how small the margin for error is for those clubs outside the elite, particularly when it comes to recruitment. So competitive is the Premier League’s bloated middle, it only requires a few wrong turns of the wheel to find yourselves battling at the bottom.

Those clubs with the giant revenues, already operating from a position of strength, can afford to make more mistakes. Like the action movie villain you think has finally been vanquished, they have the ability to quickly regenerate.

Tottenham are regularly derided but the table ahead of this weekend still shows them above Villa, Brighton and Brentford, clubs enjoying their best seasons in years or, in the case of the latter two, their history. Should Villa defeat Spurs tomorrow and beat them into Europe there may be a temptation in some quarters to see it as a changing of the guard. The reality is in the summer the table will reset, Tottenham will recruit a new high-profile manager and Villa’s challenge will begin all over again, with the added complication of having to factor in Thursday European matches.

The presence of Emery, the most decorated head coach the club have ever appointed, provides the biggest reason for confidence. Yet you might also view his recruitment as an example of those fine margins. Villa looked as bad as any team in the division prior the Spaniard’s arrival and a wrong move after sacking Steven Gerrard might have sent the season in a very different direction.

Convincing Emery to join was a very good, potentially brilliant decision, in the same way Wolves will be glad for their patience (and Michael Beale’s change of heart) in pursuit of Julen Lopetegui.

But if either club wants to infiltrate the elite, not least stay there, they will need to keep getting the vast majority of their calls right.