Emery: Villa can be kings of Europe if club back me

UNAI EMERY paved the way for a busy January for Aston Villa as he urged the club to show ‘ambition’ to help him win the Champions League.

Villa have been the Premier League’s surprise performers this season and if they beat Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium tonight, they will draw level with the Gunners and set a new club record of 12 consecutive wins. Financial regulations have limited Villa’s room for manoeuvre in the transfer market, but Emery still expects them to be active when the window opens on Thursday. He said yesterday: ‘Dreams are free. Everyone has to dream. I have my dreams and I’m getting them here. My huge dream here, or as a coach, is to win the Champions League. This has been my dream all my life. Last year we played in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and I was coach of Villarreal when we went to the semi-finals in 2022.

‘But then we are realistic. Right now, the only dream I have is tomorrow’s match. Of course we can analyse how we want to build the club and where we want to get to, but now it is all about tomorrow.’

Asked about January, the Villa manager added: ‘We are alert and if we can sign someone to help us and really improve, we will do it. We can sign players, only we can’t spend a lot. But we can do something and, of course, maybe change (move on) players as well.

‘We want to be ambitious to achieve our objective. Our end

objective is European football. When I came here, it was to try to fight for trophies and play in Europe consistently.’ Emery will be without Matty Cash and Boubacar Kamara due to suspension for tonight. Villa’s Damian Vidagany, meanwhile, has hit out at a Premier League fixture list that sees the club play two away games in the space of four days. Writing on X, director of football Vidagany — one of Emery’s closest allies in the game — said: ‘The fact is that this makes more convenient the fixtures for certain clubs that are not travelling on this very busy Christmas period. I let you take a look which clubs are playing home both last and next match.

‘It would be a disgrace if the fixtures become a political territory.’

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta claimed the Gunners will also be active in January if their injury crisis does not subside. Kai Havertz, Cristhian Mosquera, Ben White, Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori are all sidelined. Asked if there was space in the squad for a new defender next month, Arteta said: ‘Depending on the availability of certain players, the window is there.

‘We have to be actively looking. If we can do it or not is a different story, but our job is to always be prepared because something can happen.’