Unai Emery said: “This week, one of the coaches said to me: ‘Unai, did you see how when Ollie missed the early chance, he didn’t shy away from anything? He came back and was focused again for the next chance. That is the key. Maybe you can score, maybe you don’t, but you stay consistent. When strikers score, they are up, maybe when they don’t, they are down. But they have to try to be level. My message to my strikers is to think, ‘we don’t want to concede’. My message to my goalkeepers is, ‘we have to score’. That allows us to connect everyone and ensures they are thinking of the team.”
Villa had only won two league games before the arrival and his appointment has been nothing short of transformational. The Spaniard has won 12 of his first 18 matches in charge, and has more than made up for time lost over the past 18 months.
Unai Emery said: “My dreams don’t change. I said when I arrived the dream was to play with Aston Villa in Europe. I said it because I was not thinking about it when I arrived here five months ago. But now, the target changed because we did very good and have progressed more than I thought. Still my dream is to play in Europe, here, and if we are playing in Europe, it is because we are progressing. My dream still is to win a trophy here. I want to build a team with the potential and spirit to do it. Now we have potential and of course I want to keep developing this team to get more potential players to add to the squad next year. Now I am very happy with the players we have now and we have shown our potential to be in with the teams in the European positions.”
