Carlos Cuellar says Aston Villa's squad can cope with a top four push this season.

The Spain defender is confident their campaign will not go off the rails like last season.

Cuellar told Villa's website: "The league this season is really, really tough. Last season there was only really Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and us for a lot of the campaign.

"Now we have Manchester City and Tottenham. They have good players and they will be fighting massively to break into that top four along with us.

"But I feel we have a better chance of maintaining things this time around because we have a bigger squad. We struggled at the end of last season because we didn't have the biggest.

"But now we have virtually two players per position. If you want to change one full-back for the game for example, you know the one coming in is going to do a good job. That's the quality we have and the competition for places."