Matt Maher: This season's top-four race could be wide open

The extent to which that is now the case was laid bare in the past week, as Villa battled to a 2-2 draw at home to the Bees before, five days later, blowing away Fenerbahce.

Both testament to the west London club’s continued progress and the increasing dominance of English sides over the vast majority of European opponents, the two results were used on Friday by Unai Emery as evidence the Premier League has never been tougher.

“You feel Brentford can play in this level, in the Champions League,” said the Villa boss. “This is the Premier League.”

The early season table would appear to add further weight to his argument.

Brentford sit fourth in the standings, one of just three teams still undefeated after six matches.

Yet Keith Andrews’ team have only won two of those games, as have fifth-placed Everton.

In actual fact, only five top flight teams have won more than two matches to this point. One of those is promoted Ipswich, by some distance bookies’ favourites to go straight back down to the Championship alongside Hull City (currently eighth after losing just once).

It is, by any measure, a little too early in the campaign to begin studying the table too closely.

But the spread of results over the opening two months tells us that, outside of Manchester City, Arsenal and maybe Brighton, the only consistency has been inconsistency.

There are a few things to take away from this.

One is that this may well prove to be the perfect season for the kind of major rebuild Emery is attempting at Villa.

Excellent though his team might have looked in midweek, the manager has not overlooked the weaker standard of opposition yet while he might express concern at fluctuating performance levels, they are hardly the only ones struggling for rhythm.

Most of the other sides you would typically expect to be challenging for Champions League qualification come the second half of the season are also facing big questions.

A revamped Tottenham are still to win a game. Chelsea continue to veer between bad and brilliant with little in between, while Liverpool are struggling to fire and Andoni Iraola and Michael Carrick appears at increasing risk of becoming the next victim of Manchester United’s defunct machine.

The only team with a 100 per cent record, meanwhile, have the small matter of a possible banishment from the league hanging over their heads.

All of which leaves Arsenal, the reigning champions who once again appear, pound for pound, the best and deepest squad in the land. Or at least that’s the case when you ignore those who haven’t been found guilty of multiple major rule breaches.

The question is whether such unpredictability will continue and if the likes of Brentford and Brighton, both lauded for their operating models, can stay the course and land a major blow by nabbing one of those Champions League spots come the end of the season?

Last season saw Liverpool take the final spot with the lowest points tally for 20 years. If the early weeks of this campaign are any guide, the race could be even wider.

Brighton have gotten close before. This season is the second they are competing in Europe, having previously reached the last-16 of the Europa League in 2024.

Brentford, meanwhile, have consistently been in the picture for European qualification, with two ninth-placed finishes and a 10th in three of the last four seasons.

When Emery observed on Friday teams finishing above the Bees generally make it into Europe, he was absolutely right. Nothing about their presence in the top half of the table should still be a surprise.

You still think it would take a mammoth achievement, however, for them to really be appreciated.

Much as Newcastle and Villa have landed some hefty blows, with at least one qualifying for the Champions League in each of the past four seasons, nothing would symbolise the end of the Big Six era like Brentford or Brighton finishing in the top-four.

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In truth, it is doubtful even that achievement would halt the national media obsession with the so-called Big Six.

Much as supporters can sometimes be a little thin-skinned when it comes to criticism of their clubs, Villa fans took understandable umbrage at a rather snidey comment from the BBC, no less, after Wednesday’s record European win.

“Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona and…erm…Aston Villa top the table with the best record after two rounds of matches,” explained an update on the corporation’s Champions League online blog.

Sorry, why the shock? Could this be the same Aston Villa which reached the quarter-finals of the competition two seasons ago, won last season’s Europa League and had just become only the third team since the turn of the century (after Manchester City and Manchester United) to win 10 straight matches in European competition? It surely could!

Maybe years of Midlands clubs being overlooked has made us paranoid, yet it is difficult the same tone being used to describe Tottenham, to use the most obvious example, being in such a position.

Clearly, despite winning 19 out of 21 European home matches, Villa’s success in Europe is still hard for some to get their head around.

Maybe the surprise would be better saved for when Spurs actually win a Premier League game.