Matt Maher analysis: It’s a Sunday stroll as the good times roll on at Aston Villa

It was so comfortable, it was almost boring. Indeed, by the closing stages it almost felt Villa had slipped into something of a stupor, so straightforward had been their task.

With Luton having failed to seriously test Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa obliged by sending a header looping over his own goalkeeper and off the bar, the ball striking Martinez on the way down flying into the net. Substitute Leander Dendoncker then almost gifted the visitors a second consolation when he dawdled and was dispossessed on the edge of his own box in stoppage time.

None of it could distract from the fact Villa had sauntered to victory without really getting out of first gear.

They should already have been two to the good by the time John McGinn opened the scoring in the 17th minute. They should really have added more after Moussa Diaby and a Tom Lockyer own goal had put the result beyond doubt early in the second half.

The three goals here took their tally through five league matches at Villa Park this season to 20. This was their seventh win in 10 league games this term and their 22nd in 35 since Emery walked through the doors of Bodymoor Heath a year ago this coming Wednesday, during which time they have taken 71 points.

It is a run of form not seen since Villa finished second to Manchester United in the inaugural Premier League season more than three decades ago.

It is still not good enough for Emery, a manager so demanding you suspect if his team won every week by five clear goals his first question to the players would be why it wasn’t six?

For the second consecutive Sunday the Spaniard sat in the Villa Park press room and insisted they should not be considered genuine contenders for Champions League football.

His argument, that they had come a cropper in spectacular fashion against Liverpool and Newcastle earlier in the season, might not be without some merit.

But then stumbling against your top four rivals doesn’t matter all that much when you beat everyone else. Take those two August defeats out of the equation and Wolves are the only team to have stopped Villa taking maximum points. Chelsea, who Emery still classes as part of a ‘Big Seven’ Villa must aim to crack, are the only other side to stop them winning by fewer than two clear goals.

Yesterday, against visitors with only one win to their name thus far, was precisely the kind of fixture in which good Villa teams of old would have stumbled. The fact a surprise never looked on the cards is another example of why under Emery, it feels just that bit different. Villa supporters are no stranger to fatalism but slowly, surely, they are daring to dream this time it might be different.

Fans with a penchant for pessimism might have been fearing the worst when Nicolo Zaniolo sent a glorious chance wide inside the opening four minutes. Even more so when Luton goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski somehow stopped Ollie Watkins adding to his season’s tally at point-blank range.

Yet Villa showed little sign of being frustrated and with one clever piece of skill from McGinn they were ahead. Douglas Luiz’s free-kick, dummied by Diaby, did not offer the Scot the perfect chance for a shot but with the Luton defence expecting him to try his luck anyway, he brought the ball under control with his favoured left foot, turned away from the defence and fired a low drive beyond Kaminski and into the bottom corner for his fourth goal of the season.

It would cap an excellent all-round performance in a game where McGinn always seemed to have things under control. Whenever Luton thought there might be a sniff on the counter, he was invariably the man who appeared to snuff it out.

On the ball he was patient, yet decisive, with no better example than in the build-up to Villa’s second when he held off his man before rolling a pass into the path of Lucas Digne. From the left wing the Frenchman whipped in a vicious cross which the in-form Leon Bailey managed to redirect into the path of Diaby, who drilled home from 10 yards out.

The latter, who then saw Lockyer divert his goalbound effort into the net for Villa’s third, was McGinn’s biggest rival for the man-of-the-match prize. Having played a key role in wins over Brighton and West Ham, this was the day when he was also rewarded with a first goal in more than two months.