Aston Villa boss Unai Emery revealed that he enjoyed our performance in our 3-2 win over RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
Goals from John McGinn and Jhon Duran twice gave us a lead in the encounter, but after the hosts fought back on both occasions to level the score, Ross Barkley’s late deflected effort proved to be the winner.
READ MORE: Villa player ratings vs RB Leipzig: Barkley seals thrilling win
It’s a pivotal win for our hopes of advancing to the knockout stage of the Champions League directly and to skip the playoff round, as we move up to third place in the standings for now, with 13 points from our opening six games.
Emery noted that he enjoyed our performance in the win, and hailed the impact of our substitutes, particularly Duran, as they were decisive in helping us eventually prevail and seal all three points.
While the Villa boss will undoubtedly want to see improvements made defensively as we were guilty of conceding poor goals again in this one, the most important factor was getting the win and continuing to build good form, as that’s now three consecutive victories across all competitions.
“I try to enjoy and always we want to improve and sometimes it is hard but today the team were performing well, playing seriously and I was enjoying it,” he told Amazon Prime, as quoted by BBC Sport.
“We tried to overcome the mistakes we made and we did. More or less we were playing consistently. One mistake and they score but then we played very well. Champions League is very difficult and we have to expect that every team playing at home are feeling strong. We played with consistency and domination.
“The idea when we prepare the game the plan is also for the subs to help if we needed it. Watkins had a small injury and Duran scores. Buendia and Barkley scoring the third goal. This is what any coach would want.
“Sometimes he [Duran] is very impatient and we have to try and keep balanced with him. He scored a great goal and he works and we are trying to get the team strong with a tactical approach. His potential is massive. Tactically he is improving and today he played a fantastic 45 minutes.
“The last 10 minutes you have to be positive and try and use the players you have and the subs to try and get the victory.
“Today we were thinking if we won we could be a contender in the last two matches to be in the top eight. We achieved this option and we are going to try and get top eight. We are happy because we are in the top 24.”
While Villa still face Monaco and Celtic in the Champions League as we look to secure a top-eight finish, attention switches back to the Premier League this weekend as we have another difficult challenge ahead of us.
Emery and the players visit Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening with the initial test being to recover from this thrilling win and match the standard set, and if we can continue to string wins together, we’ll go into the Christmas schedule with real confidence and momentum.
Substitutions will again be key, but from his initial set-up with our changed system, the gameplan and the use of his changes to impact the game, the Villa boss was fundamental in our midweek success.