Aston Villa news: Opinion on Villa’s Champions League prospects

We asked you to send in your questions for Fara Williams and the former England midfielder and BBC Sport pundit has been answering a selection.

Bearski asked: In the new format of the Champions League, it seems easier to qualify for the knockout stages than to go out. That said, how far do you think Aston Villa could realistically progress in this year’s competition?

With this new format, the fact you are not playing home and away legs against the same team in the group stage but instead are facing different opposition and different challenges, it does make it a little bit easier to qualify for the next stage.

Unai Emery is a fantastic manager, especially in Europe, and we have seen before how well he sets his teams up to compete in these competitions.

The result they got against Bayern Munich was fantastic and in these one-off games, tactically, Aston Villa are so good at executing Emery’s plan.

Even though it is hard to say how far Villa can go in the competition, but I do believe they can go quite deep, maybe even to the quarter-finals and beyond, because tactically they are so good.

Other teams will know Villa are adaptable and when you play European opposition, you have to be adaptable. You have to be able to counter the opposition’s weaknesses and know what your strengths are within that.

Emery is smart enough in Europe to know how to set up against different opposition and it is just about executing that.

If they were not already, they will definitely be taken more seriously now after the Bayern Munich game.

Fara was speaking to BBC Sport’s Nicola Pearson