Aston Villa boss Unai Emery spoke to the press after his side progressed to the last eight of the Europa League
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery(Image: Getty Images)
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Unai Emery sat down with the media at Villa Park following Aston Villa's 2-0 win over Lille in the second leg of their Europa League round of 16 clash.
John McGinn broke the deadlock in the 54th minute, before Leon Bailey tapped in Ollie Watkins' pass to extend the lead late on. Here is every word Emery said to the press after full-time...
Unai, your thoughts on the victory?
"I am happy with how we performed in the two matches, and how we tried to play serious, being organised and respecting the opponent. We were not brilliant in those two matches, but we were consistent and we defended well, dominating when we could dominate. When we had momentum to be ruthless against them, we were. We needed it. We needed those two matches to show this competitive way."
McGinn said this was Sancho's best game at Villa. Do you agree?"Hopefully we will play matches improving the match he played today. Today he played well. Sancho has some qualities which are high-level qualities. Today he showed it. Very important for us."
Did we see how important McGinn is again?"Yes. He needs minutes, and today he added minutes for him and for the team. He is getting fit again. I think he will be very important. He played 70 minutes, progressively getting better. The first half he was recovering confidence, playing on the left side. He was feeling comfortable there.
"The second half, he scored a goal, which is very good for him to feel better. If we can recover players like him, or Youri Tielemans and Matty Cash, I think we can perform better."
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Are you pleased with how you’ve utilised your squad in Europe?"We are focusing all the season through the Premier League - it is the priority. Then, Europa League, which is a very difficult competition to win. During the process we are enjoying the way competing and using different moments to use different players. We are trying to compete, and competing in the Europa League can help us as well to get our structure in the squad stronger.
"We are now sharing the Premier League on Sunday, and we must be intelligent playing and competing with the players we have in the squad available. We are going to try to get a smart decision from me for each match."
Was this the plan over two legs?"The plan was to play with our personality and to dominate the match in case Lille were doing intense pressing. In case they weren’t doing it, we had to be good with the ball and our positioning. We had to compete and adapt of them. When they had the ball, it was difficult to recover the ball. We were patient, like we were away - today we did that same. Being patient and focused on how we were planning the match after the first leg, we respected them and the momentum.
"We were trying to feel comfortable defensively in our structure, getting the game for us with our qualities of the players, and being ruthless sometimes. I think we did it. In the second half we started lower defending. They were dominating us, but we got a goal in transition after a great pass from Emiliano. It was the plan because we knew before the match how they will have the possibility to dominate the match."
How important was that ball from Martinez to take the sting out of the tie?"Yes, Emi Martinez is very important. He usually can start showing our game plan, playing short and trying to progress with passes with the centre-backs. He can be patient, but also go long like he did with the pass he did for Sancho.
"I remember he did the same pass for Marcus Rashford against Brugge here last year. We got a red card for Brugge. He has this long pass. When he is playing focused like he was today, he can help us. Not only saving us, but we need him to play in combination with the ball, and also playing longer balls."
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