From 'lazy' to title challengers: Aston Villa is the big surprise in the Premier League this season

When Aston Villa was on a five-match winless run to start the Premier League season, the team looked more like a potential relegation candidate than a title contender.

Manager Unai Emery was describing his players as “lazy.” Villa's big names — including England internationals Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers — were showing no form at all. There were major concerns about the club’s lack of activity in the summer’s transfer window.

How, then, to explain the position Villa finds itself in heading into its final game of 2026?

On the back of 11 straight victories in all competitions, Villa is on its best winning streak in more than a century and is being viewed as a legitimate challenger for the Premier League title.

Indeed, beat first-place Arsenal on Tuesday and Villa will be tied on points with the Gunners at the top of the league halfway through its campaign. They and Manchester City have broken away from the rest and are separated by three points after 18 of 38 games, with Liverpool a further seven points back in fourth place.

And Villa will not be scared of Arsenal. After all, just three weeks ago, Villa scored a last-gasp goal to defeat the leaders 2-1 at home and keep its winning run going. That continued on Saturday with a come-from-behind 2-1 triumph at fifth-place Chelsea, secured thanks to two second-half goals by Watkins.

Much of the team's success is being put down to Emery, the Spanish coach whose savvy tactics, well-timed substitutions and belief in his players leaves no task insurmountable.

Like when Villa trailed — and was being outclassed — at Stamford Bridge at the weekend, before Watkins' entrance off the bench. Or when Villa twice went behind at West Ham two weeks earlier before winning 3-2. Or when Villa went 2-0 down at Brighton on Dec. 3, only to fight back for a 4-3 victory. Two weeks before that, Villa conceded early at Leeds and rallied for a 2-1 win.

It means Villa goes to Emirates Stadium — where Arsenal hasn't lost in any competition this season and has taken 25 points from a possible 27 in the Premier League — seeking a sixth straight away win.

The match might be regarded as much a test of Arsenal's title credentials as Villa's.

“Not really,” Emery, a former Arsenal manager, replied on Saturday when asked if his team can stay in the title race.

No one will believe him three days later if Villa — most recently English champion in 1981 — racks up another win.

City, which is two points behind Arsenal in second place, doesn't play until Thursday when Pep Guardiola's team travels to Sunderland protecting an eight-match winning run.

Liverpool has steadied without being entirely convincing and is looking for a fifth straight win in a home match against Leeds, also on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Chelsea — in fifth place — hosts Bournemouth and sixth-place Manchester United is at home to last-place Wolverhampton, which is still without a win in what is now the worst ever start to a Premier League campaign after 18 games.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin has netted in each of his last six matches for Leeds, making it the best scoring form of his career as he heads to Anfield to play Liverpool. The England hopeful still has a way to go to match Jamie Vardy's Premier League-record scoring streak of 11 games, from back in 2015 during Leicester's astonishing title-winning campaign.

Rayan Cherki has settled quickly in English soccer following his summer move to Manchester City from Lyon and is tied for the most assists in the Premier League with seven, having set up one goal before scoring the winner at Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

Arsenal has defensive problems for the match against Villa, with right backs Jurrien Timber and Ben White, left back Riccardo Calafiori and center back Cristhian Mosquera all missing the team's 2-1 win over Brighton on Saturday. Midfielder Declan Rice was forced to play as an emergency right back for that game.

Mason Mount was hoping his injury issues were behind him after finally establishing himself in Man United's team. However, Mount came off with an unspecified injury in the 1-0 win over Newcastle on Friday and is being assessed ahead of Wolves' trip to Old Trafford.

The January transfer window is about to open and Bournemouth forward Antoine Semenyo is set to be a central figure in it.

The Ghana international has been linked with most of the Premier League's top teams but Manchester City appears to be best-placed to sign him.

Sky Sports reported Monday that City has opened talks with Bournemouth about signing Semenyo, who has a release clause of 65 million pounds ($87 million).

It means the trip to Chelsea might prove to be Semenyo's final game for Bournemouth, for whom he has scored nine league goals this season.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Aston Villa's Morgan Rogers celebrates winning the Premier League soccer match between Aston Villa and Manchester United, in Birmingham, England, Sunday Dec. 21, 2025. (Nick Potts/PA via AP)

Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins, left and Chelsea's Trevoh Chalobah vie for the ball, during the English Premier League soccer match between Chelsea and Aston Villa, at Stamford Bridge, in London, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (Adam Davy/PA via AP)

Authorities in China’s Xinjiang region are threatening detention over downloading, sharing or listening to a wide range of Uyghur-language songs, the AP has found. The policy was revealed in a leaked recording of a public meeting last October in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang, home to 11 million Uyghurs and other mostly Turkic ethnic minorities.

The leaked recording, shared exclusively with AP by Norway-based nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp, suggests that forms of repression continue in the region. A United Nations report in 2022 said China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang through its campaign of internment and political indoctrination that unfolded primarily between 2017 and 2019.

Here are the main takeaways from AP’s report:

During a meeting last October, police and other authorities in Kashgar warned residents that those who listened to so-called “problematic” Uyghur songs, stored them on their devices or shared them on social media could face detention.

Authorities played a pre-recorded message that included examples of banned songs, ranging from folk ballades to rap tunes and newer songs developed in the Uyghur diaspora.

The policy has been corroborated by AP interviews with two former Xinjiang residents who said their family members and friends have been detained for playing and sharing Uyghur music, and that police searched their or others’ phones looking for banned songs.

The AP also reviewed the court verdict of Uyghur music producer Yashar Xiaohelaiti, who was sentenced last year to three years in prison for uploading to his cloud account songs deemed sensitive.

There are seven categories of problematic songs that authorities warned residents to keep away from. These included songs with religious references; songs that “twist the Uyghurs’ history” and incite separatism; songs that smear the Chinese Communist Party’s rule of Xinjiang and incite terrorism and extremism; tunes that encourage resentment toward the government; and songs that advocate “filthy and dirty thoughts and behavior.”

In practice, almost any Uyghur-language song could be targeted, experts say. Problematic songs given as examples during the meeting included “Besh pede,” a popular folk song depicting a love story and that includes the word “God;” and “Forefathers,” a decades-old patriotic song by famed Uyghur musician Abdurehim Heyit, who was detained during the crackdown.

Those found listening to or sharing the banned songs could be “heavily prosecuted,” authorities warned. They did not specify punishment — something that usually gives authorities flexibility in enforcement — but gave the example of several people who had served 10 days in detention for being found with banned songs.

For one Uyghur music producer, Yashar Xiaohelaiti, the punishment has been much more severe. Xiaohelaiti was sentenced to three years in prison last year on charges of promoting extremism after uploading 42 “problematic” songs that he had produced to his account on NetEase Cloud Music, a Chinese music streaming service, according to a court verdict seen by AP.

The Chinese government insists that minorities in Xinjiang can freely express their culture and religion. Yet the renewed crackdown in the form of the songs ban suggests forms of repression continue, experts say.

“I think that most of the forms of repression that we saw in 2017-18-19 have either continued or gotten worse,” said Rian Thum, a senior lecturer in East Asian history at the University of Manchester. “The one thing that’s gone down is the number of people in reeducation camps and the visibility of security measures like roadblocks.”

Other, less conspicuous forms of control include the expansion of boarding schools, where middle-schoolers are educated while separated from their families and learn almost exclusively in Mandarin Chinese, he added, and random checks of phones for sensitive material including banned songs.

Rahima Mahmut, Uyghur human rights activist, performs with the London Uyghur Ensemble during an interview with The Associated Press in London, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan)