Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has reflected on his side's defeat to Go Ahead Eagles in the Europa League
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery
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Unai Emery believes his Aston Villa team will take valuable lessons from tonight's shock defeat against Go Ahead Eagles in the Europa League.
Evann Guessand opened the scoring inside four minutes, but Villa failed to extend their lead and were punished by Mathis Suray, who equalised before half-time.
Go Ahead Eagles then completed the comeback on the hour mark when Mats Deijl got in behind the Villa defence and finished past Emi Martinez.
Emi Buendia later missed a penalty after a handball in the box, with his spot-kick sailing over the bar.
After the defeat, Emery said that he is demanding a reaction from his players.
"We have had experiences like this. We lost at Legia Warsaw, we drew at Zrinjski and at Ajax," Emery said. "Sometimes we performed well. Today we made more chances, but we lost. This is football. We are analysing how you can be better than the opponent and still lose.
"Europe helped us to recover our bad form. We won two matches and we felt better after it. Today, Europe showed us how difficult it is to play, and away.
"Even when dominating and creating chances, if you make mistakes and concede chances, maybe you can lose. Today it happened. We must accept it.
"We have to add experiences for our next matches and our way this season. There is still work to do. This is my summary about how we have broken the good form we have. We have to recover quick. We have six points and we were optimistic to add more today. We lost it. We have to react in the next matches, adding the circumstances we had today, improving and analysing everything.
"We have to try to avoid the goals like we conceded. The first goal was through a set-piece – the first half we didn’t perform in them well. You have to try to be so focused to stop the opponent. In the second half, we had a penalty and we dominated.
"We conceded a few transitions, and they were clinical. They were fantastic defensively. Of course, my analysis must be deeply about how tactically we conceded chances. We have to analyse and correct it. Europe helped us a lot to come back after our best start. Now we can cut our good start."
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