How many points do Aston Villa need to qualify for the next round of the UEFA Champions League?

Aston Villa travel to Belgium in just under two weeks time to play Club Brugge in Mathday four of the UEFA Champions League! A win for Villa would maintain their 100% record in the competition and help in their ambitious attempt to achieve automatic qualification for the kncokout phase. So, after securing nine points from a possible nine so far, how many points would Unai Emery's team need to achieve qualification for the next phase of the competition?

Pushing towards qualification

According to @fmeetsdata, on X, Aston Villa would need to achieve a minimum of 16 points from their eight league phase matches to qualify for the knockout rounds automatically. In the new 36-team initial league format of the UEFA Champions League, the top eight will qualify for the knockout rounds without having to play a two-legged play-off match. The teams that finish between 9th and 24th will have to battle it out in play-off games to see who joins the top eight in the next round.

The data, put together as a result of significant testing and 10,000 simulations, suggests that with their nine points gathered already, Aston Villa have secured a place in the play-off round at the very least. The target for the vast majority of Villa fans at the beginning of the campaign would be to aim to finish in that middle section of the league. However, expectations have perhaps exceeded that now after their perfect start to the competition.

In order to finish 8th and clinch automatic qualification for the knockout round, Villa would need seven more points. This would mean two wins and a draw from the next five games would be enough to defy all odds and expectations at the start of the season, and see them through.

Who do Villa still have to play?

The table below presents the remaining league phase games that Villa have:

Who else is likely to make the top eight?

After strong starts to both the Domestic and European season, Manchester and Liverpool are almost certainly going to make the top eight. Barcelona also look like also look to be a superb side once more under Hansi Flick's control. Their demolition of Bayern Munich on Wednesday night evidenced their strong start to the campaign, whilst they also sit top of La Liga. I would expect Arsenal to make the top eight too as they have a run of fixtures that should return plenty of points. The remaining spots in that top bracket is really up for grabs, in my opinion and a number of teams could finish anywhere from fifth to around 12th in the standings.

Predictions

Below is my prediction based on the worldfootball.net UEFA Champions League predictor.

With the fixtures to come, I believe that Villa will secure wins against Club Brugge and at home to Celtic, whilst picking up a point against both Juventus and RB Leipzig.

The big and glaringly obvious omission from that top eight is Real Madrid. Madrid finished with 16 points based on my predictions, finishing in 9th place on goal difference. Despite hammering Borussia Dortmund in the previous game week, they still have very tough fixtures to come. They must play AC Milan (H), Liverpool (A), Atalanta (A), Salzburg (H), and Brest (A) whereas arguably Dortmund have more favourable fixtures.

Celtic also make the cut and bag a play-off spot, alongside last seasons Europa League winners Atalanta, French side Lille and Spanish giants Atletico Madrid, to name a few.

This does mean that one big team could miss out on the opportunity to qualify (if my predictions have any chance of being correct) and that is Unai Emery's former club Paris Saint Germain. Without the previous powerhouse names like Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe or Neymar in the ranks, PSG look a different side and have struggled in the compeition so far. They have so far lost to Arsenal, drawn at home to PSV and narrowly defeated Girona in Paris.

Based on my predictions, all four English teams will progress automatically to the knockout round, and Unai Emery's men can look forward to seeing how deep they could go in the competition.

UTV