Managers don't often care for international breaks, but it is time for a time-out at Aston Villa after a wild couple of weeks. It was all going so well.

And it still is, really. Yes, Villa dropped points from winning positions in the past two Premier League games in annoying ways. It happens, but there is no sense of lingering concern from most Villa fans or any serious pundit.

Bournemouth was a regrettable missed opportunity, given their League Cup history, but maybe inevitable in the present day. Barcelona was just different in every sense. Although Villa were well beaten, and it was galling to see them inflict the first blow on themselves, Unai Emery's side nevertheless put up a much more spirited show than most sides who have been demolished at the Camp Nou lately. The fans I spoke to had a pretty good time anyway, albeit a rather damp one.

Villa's on-field stumbles seem like nothing more serious than getting a much-altered squad to fully settle down. It is easy to imagine them gliding along soon, entirely into their rhythm. That would be a perfectly normal process of development, were Villa not in the delicate position of trying to bridge between two sections of a league that is highly stratified, the present table notwithstanding.

To jump from the strivers to the top bracket more consistently, they will realistically need to qualify for the Champions League in successive seasons. In a transitional year with a modest start, that will be testing, but the struggles of others will help them. They should at least go close.

It will help if the tension that just occasionally seems to grip the club in recent years – really the only difficult moments since Emery has been in charge – simmers down over the break. Yes, the Manchester United rumours were unhelpful, but were just noise. Emery is a top-level coach, so when the biggest jobs come up he will be 'linked' with them, whatever that means.

However irritating or crassly expressed Villa feel comments from pundits are, there is no point chasing everything down.

Next time it happens – and it will – then so long as Emery is happy where he is (he seems to be) and your fans are happy (they are at their happiest in decades), let it be. Corporate energy is too valuable to waste on such fluff when there are important games - on and off the field - to play. Pundits gonna' pundit. Do not engage. Chill out.

"Don't be bitter, be better," suggested Villa supporter Amy Rose Finlay on this page on Tuesday, and that seems like a good motto for the next couple of weeks.