They clearly are - they signed one of our best players and tossed us a squaddie on loan in reserve.
Watkins
Ings
Digne
Coutinho
Martinez
Cash
Carlos
Konsa
Bassey
Luiz
Add in useful squad players when fit like Buendia, Bailey, Mcginn, Traore and they'llno doubt be signing more this summer.
We have literally abar 5 good players - their problem is appointing bad managers.
You are overrating a lot of their players. They got 6 points more than us in like one of our worst ever seasons.
As much as I liked digne, and we missed his creativity, I'd have myko every day in terms of defensive ability, which is what we needed.
They have some decent players, but we felt the same with our players when we signed them and lashed huge wages on them (as villa are doing currently).
They scored 9 more goals than us despite us not having a centre forward for about 6 months.
We also picked the wrong manager at the start of the season, and they still only finished 2 places above us. If they had such a superior squad, you'd expect it to be a bigger gap even with the wrong manager.