John McGinn looked ahead to the second leg of the **Europa League**Round of 16 tie against Lille.
Ollie Watkins scored a header to put Aston Villa 1-0 up at the midway mark of the two-legged fixture. McGinn made his return to action from a two month injury layoff as a second half substitute in France, and the Scotsman wants to see his side take care of business at Villa Park on Thursday.
“It was a difficult first leg and now we have an opportunity at home to either keep the result or win. We’re going to try and win the game and try to score first, which is the objective in every game but it’s more important now to get a two-goal advantage to kick on and qualify for the quarterfinals.
“We know it’s an important game, probably slightly more important because of our recent results, so the dressing room knows the magnitude of the game. We’re all really focused to get the job done.
“You can’t approach it looking for a draw. No matter what standard of football you play, if you play for a draw, you get deeper and deeper and the other team gets more control of the game.
“We’re looking to win the game like we do every game, and we obviously went into the first leg looking to win it. Lille are very strong in the second legs of ties – they were 1-0 down going into the away leg in Belgrade and won.
*“We know they’re very astute and they have a lot of experience in European competitions in the same way we do, having played Conference League, Champions League and Europa League. With Giroud, André and Haraldsson – all players we know well – they know how to get through ties.*
“We need to be on our guard.”
“At the end of the PSG game we got a lot of plaudits over the two legs, but essentially, we had failed in our task. And that’s what the manager has driven into us; he’s a manager that has a reputation of not getting close to the finishing line but getting over the finishing line.
“We don’t want to be a maybe team, we don’t want to be a team who people say were not bad, we want something to show for it. We know we’ve got expectation on us and we’re one of the favourites to win the competition. It’s up to us to deliver performances and results that prove why we are one of the favourites because of how we’ve played over the last few years domestically and in Europe.
“At certain stages we haven’t managed ties properly, we haven’t managed these games correctly, but what we’ve learned from them we can use to our advantage and give ourselves the best possible chance to go a step further.”