Jhon Duran opened the scoring for Aston Villa against Man City
Jhon Duran opened the scoring for Aston Villa against Man City
Unai Emery praised Jhon Duran's all-round performance after Aston Villa's 2-1 win over Premier League champions Man City.
The Colombia international has now scored in each of his six starts for Villa this season after opening the scoring for the hosts against City at Villa Park. He finished past Stefan Ortega after being picked out by Morgan Rogers inside the box in the 16th minute.
"He arrived two years ago and he is in a process," Emery said of the striker. "Two years ago we lost here 4-2 to Arsenal and were demanding for the striker to be close to the box and Jorginho scored. The minute 60 or 70 today, they had the ball in the box and Duran was there taking the ball and starting our transition.
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"This is the example. It is good. Two years ago we asked him to do it, now he is doing it. He is scoring too. I think he has big potential.
"I think he is understanding better, his commitment is better than the last two years. He was improving but not getting to the level we wanted, now he is there. With Ollie [Watkins] we have to use both, but it is very good news for me, the club and the team. They are performing."
Speaking about the game plan which Villa deployed to overcome City, Emery added: "We are always planning but we are not always being successful. Today how we started creating goals, we were doing good press and the first five or 10 minutes we were getting some corners. It was important for the confidence we got. We were aggressive and waiting for our moment.
"They had two chances to score in the first half and we were defending. The game plan was to get a good position and when we were building up to stop them and progress with the ball.
"We did better in the second half, we stopped them and that was the key. We started creating some chances we needed and the confidence was increasing for us and their confidence was going down. It was fantastic how players responded on the field to what we worked on before."
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