Last season, possibly around this time of year, Aston Villa were looking fairly solid in the top four and, by contrast, Arsenal were really struggling to show their quality. We all know how it turned out, so no need to go over old ground, but one particular piece of banter from a section of the Arsenal support stuck in my mind. On a number of occasions I stumbled on a Gooner opining that Aston Villa would not be capable of doing the Champions League justice should we qualify in Arsenal’s place and would not make it out of the group stage, so it would be better for all concerned if Arsenal went instead.

Their tongues may have been firmly placed in their cheeks, but that irked me a little. Probably because as much as I wanted to deny it, like all the best zings, there was an element of truth in there somewhere. As the season went on and MON effectively took a weakened side to fall on their swords in Moscow, any lingering doubts I held about Villa’s ability to compete on multiple fronts at the highest level were cruelly crushed and left in the gutter.

Although we failed to achieve Champions League qualification, we did have the newly reformatted Europa League in the bag for this season, so I was excited to see us mount what would surely be a reinvigorated European campaign while simultaneously managing a strong domestic programme. And then came the small matter of qualifying for the Europa League group stage by simply beating Rapid Vienna over two legs. For whatever reason, we failed miserably and our European adventure for this season was over before it even got started.

You may well feel that our success in the domestic cups this year might, at least partly, be due to not having any distractions of matches over the water, I wouldn’t wish to argue against that. We’ll never know for sure, but it probably didn’t hurt. Personally, I remain bitterly disappointed that we didn’t get another go in the second tier European competition and looking to Wembley for consolation seems a bit desperate in my humble opinion. I think we could have done both, but we can’t change it now.

I found myself returning to pondering our quality in comparison to teams competing in Europe last night as I watched Arsenal lose in Porto. And yes, there was a certain satisfaction to seeing Arsenal going behind to a quickly taken free kick, I’ll admit that. But I was looking at this Porto side, a team that our less than full strength team beat during the Peace Cup last summer, and wondering whether I should really be considering them a tier or two above Aston Villa in terms of quality as our critics would have you believe.

Sure, it was just pre-season and it might not have been a tournament anyone took too seriously, but look at Hulk with Marc Albrighton in the picture above, I seem to remember it looked like he wanted to win. As I started thinking about that game and putting this post together, I noticed that Fiorentina were holding Bayern 1-1 in Munich, although they did later concede a second goal. So there were two fairly decent Champions League sides doing a good job in the knock-out stages of the Champions League and Aston Villa took care of both last summer.

I’m quite serious now. Am I really expected to believe that there is a gulf in quality between our squad and theirs? Am I really expected to believe that we couldn’t get through the Champions League stage without disgracing ourselves? I can’t believe that, I absolutely believe that we could live with these teams. I doubt we could play them off the park, but I think we could match them. That’s a good start.

Ah, but we didn’t even get to the Europa League group stage this season, how could I possibly believe that we could survive in the top tier? That’s a good question and I suppose that there is a degree of faith involved, but I think the Rapid tie was just a bad day at the office and had we beaten them, as we absolutely should have done, we’d have gone on to good things in the Europa League. Maybe we suffered from coming into the competition cold and entering at an earlier qualifying round wouldn’t have hurt, but in the group stage we would have had 6 games to sort our act out.

Financially there may be a void between the two European competitions, but there’s a good deal of overlap between the top levels of quality in the Europa League and the lower levels of quality in the Champions League – just ask Liverpool! That’s an area I think Aston Villa would sit in very comfortably and it’s the reason that I think with a reasonably favourable group draw, we could do an acceptable job in the Champions League.

If the current squad had to somehow take part in the Champions League tomorrow, I think we’d be OK. I’d certainly like to see our lack of firepower up top addressed and a stronger option or two from the bench for the centre wouldn’t go a miss, but other than that there isn’t much I’d be concerned about if we had to face the likes of Porto or Fiorentina in the Round of 16 in the Champions League.

Next week, as the Round of 16 continues, CSKA Moscow, the side we lost to in last year’s UEFA Cup, and Seville, a team who also took part in the Peace Cup (but didn’t win because, well, we won it!), will clash and I’ll be watching very closely to see this supposed gulf in quality between us and them. My mind is open and I’ll look as hard as I can, but I honestly don’t expect to see it.

Are we capable of winning the Champions League right now? Of course not, that’s ridiculous. In fact, making a Europa League semi-final would be an achievement – again, ask Liverpool – but could we compete at Champions League level? Yes, we absolutely could in my opinion. Whether we could do so while maintaining the domestic front is more debatable.

However, one little problem that lies between ourselves and Champions League glory…. qualifying!! In many ways, forcing our way above at least one of Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool over the course of 38 Premiership games is more challenging that most games we’d have to face in Europe and therein probably lies the true gap between Aston Villa and Europe.