Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was delighted as his side returned to winning ways with a 3-1 victory over Brentford.
Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins and Matty Cash all got on the scoresheet in the first half as we were excellent in the opening 45 minutes, before we had to steady ourselves after the break and see out the win.
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A Premier League clean sheet continues to elude us which was a disappointment, but the three points were all that mattered in midweek as we ended an eight-game winless streak across all competitions.
As expected, Emery was pleased with his side’s performance, and that will hopefully now lift some pressure, build confidence and set the tone for what’s to come with Southampton visiting Villa Park on Saturday.
“Scoring like [Morgan Rogers] did was fantastic, because this is the way to get confidence again,” he told MOTD, as per BBC Sport.
“We did very well over 90 minutes, particularly in the first 30 minutes when we scored three goals. But it was not a moment to relax for us, because we drew 3-3 against them last season.
“Today the defence did a fantastic job. Tyrone Mings cleared some very good balls in the box. It was his first game in the Premier League in a long time, so it was very important.
“The team has to try and get a very good feeling again here at home, a fortress.”
Emery makes a great point in that it certainly looked as though the confidence began to flow back into our performance after the goal from Rogers, while he’s right to single out Tyrone Mings for praise.
The Villa centre-half was excellent on his return to the starting line-up in the Premier League, as he made countless key interventions to clear danger, and although we couldn’t keep a clean sheet, it was a much more solid defensive display.
It’s fundamental that we now follow this result up with another win at the weekend though as we try to build some momentum and put our slump firmly behind us, but for now, there were undoubtedly plenty of positive signs from this win to give us confidence going forward.
“The message (to players) was to try and forget the table and how we were,” Emery added. “Until day 30/32, I don’t want to speak about our objective in the table. Before I was speaking about the top five, but now we have to keep calm & recover the confidence we lost.”
“[Mings was] Fantastic. We were speaking before the match to help him and feel comfortable and play like he was playing before his injury. He was fantastic and helped us defend our box with clearances. He’s maybe going to be tired tomorrow!