Unai Emery
Ahead of Aston Villa’s Premier League clash with Fulham at Craven Cottage on Saturday (3 pm kick-off), Unai Emery sat down with the media at Bodymoor Heath. Below is every word Emery said in his pre-match press conference, with each speaker’s quotes grouped together for clarity.
**Injury Update**
Unai Emery said, “McGinn has trained with us normally and is feeling good, Konsa as well. He is feeling good. Jaden is feeling good. I think it is the first time this year we have more or less every player available to play. Only still out, but he is training not 100 percent Robin Olsen.”
**Impact of Jhon Duran**
Unai Emery said, “I am thinking as well about his process here and how he is progressing to have more opportunities to start. Maybe tomorrow or the next matches we are going to play, but I think he is ready. Today it is Friday, we trained in the morning. Every player who is in the squad they can start. Jhon Duran, now, his performances have been very good for him and for us. He is playing minutes and progressively I am getting more minutes for him.”
**Assessment of Fulham**
Unai Emery said, “I respect Marco Silva a lot as a coach. I think he is an incredible coach. He is taking a lot of experiences and the work he is doing is fantastic. You can watch them and see the demands that the coaches impose there. They are three points behind us and when I arrived here they were ahead of Villa. They were a rival for us to get into Europe. This is a very important match because this is a team I am analyzing who are relevant to us to try and keep a top position in the table.”
**On Playing Consecutive Matches**
Unai Emery said, “The players were playing for their national teams and they are progressively arriving here. Tuesday we play in the Champions League and we have to manage the match tomorrow. After that, we are going to try and take the best decisions with the players who are playing more than others. I am very happy because players like Emi Buendia are getting better and we are adding other players, Mings and Kamara. They were very important. We are as well getting minutes on the field with Jaden and he played really fantastic matches against Bayern Munich and against Manchester United. I am analyzing each opponent, but also building our own team with new options we have. Players are getting better and we have more available ahead of the matches we are going to face. I always analyze deeply our structure and how we can improve that. How we played against Ipswich and how we played against Bayern and how we played against Manchester United. After two weeks, also how we recover again our focus playing as a team and how we identify quickly the improvements we want to make. This is my work for each match.”
**Handling International Players’ Return**
Unai Emery said, “It is not easy, but trying to focus quickly with the players about the matches we are going to face. Today in the morning we spoke about the tactical game plan for tomorrow. We will travel to Fulham and this evening we will work again and tomorrow morning to change the mind of players after their matches with national teams. We are being very demanding when we are selecting the squad, finding how we can improve our challenges and performances through those players being demanding themselves as well. I don’t want to allow for some circumstances which could relax us. We are then strong. I think this is the message. To keep the same level we had last year is the challenge we have. We have started the season being strong. The Champions League has been even better than expected.”
**Opinion on Thomas Tuchel**
Unai Emery said, “Only I can speak about him as a coach. He is a really amazing coach. He has experiences, a lot of them and in different countries. He won the Champions League with Chelsea. I can’t speak about nothing more than my opinion about him as a coach.”
**Future in International Management**
Unai Emery said, “Really, I am very happy in my role with the clubs. I don’t know about in the future, in case I can think about it if a national team calls me to do this work.”
