They finished one place above us last season only - it could just as easily be a one-off. Did City and co think that they needed to make lots of signings to 'catch up' with Leicester when they had their fluke season? Of course not, they were more wary of the other big dogs, they knew Leicester just had a lucky season, and they were proved right the next season. Villa are taking some gambles to see if they can push on, which of course may be commendable, but to say that we need to 'catch up to them' is taking an extremely specific view of a single aspect of the data available to us.