Aston Villa, huh? We’re more than a third of the way into the Premier League season — and they’re tied with Liverpool, one point back of Manchester City, and two points back of Arsenal. What the hell is going on?

Do not fear, voice coming from inside of my own head. I wrote about Unai Emery and Co. today:

The non-Big-Seven Premier League teams, though, occupy a strange place in the soccer pyramid. They're mainly locked out of the Champions League, and they have way less money than the biggest teams in England. At the same time, they're all richer than almost everyone else in Europe. So, there's a whole class of players -- ones who'd typically play for, say, the third- or fourth-best teams in France or Spain or Germany or Italy, starters for mid-tier national teams and squad guys for the global powerhouses -- who are suddenly available to England's middle class of teams.

Villa are the perfect example of this. According to the estimates at FBref, they have the sixth-highest wage bill in the Premier League -- and the 11th-highest wage bill in Europe. Outside of England, only Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid spend more on player wages, per the FBref estimates. Again, these are estimates, but they show how Villa's strategy differs from the other recent top-four challengers. They're pretty much spending as much as they possibly can.

I was also on ESPN FC Live to talk about, among other things, Erik Ten Hag’s claim that Andre Onana “is the second best goalkeeper in the Premier League based on stats”:

Have wonderful weekends, all.