Unai Emery spoke of his disappointment as Aston Villa recorded their first defeat in 11 games. Bruno Fernandes got the winner at Old Trafford with Villa now needing a reaction next week against Wolves to keep their European dreams alive. Here’s every word the manager said in the press room in Manchester.
Unai, how are you feeling after that one?
Good afternoon. We lost today one opportunity in the five matches we are going to face [for Europe]. There are still possibilities to get the European places and, against Wolverhampton in the next match, we will prepare and work for some points. Today I’m a little bit disappointed. A little bit. I think the result is fair, they deserved to win but with 1-0 you can have, in 90 minutes, some moments to get in the box and score the goal and we did it. We have to reduce the distances from them to us, Manchester United to Aston Villa now, to try to take more opportunities to win here. I am happy thinking about our process. Today the match gave us information about playing a match like today trying to impose our gameplan. We didn’t impose it; first half less than the second half. At the end, we will analyse this match. I think we could do better.
You were speaking to Emiliano Buendia in the first-half, was there something you weren’t happy about?
Sometimes in different matches they are the key positions to try to get the ball and after this space to do something more. He was in this situation in the first half and I was telling him to try and drop, or maybe get wider, to get the ball and after you can then connect with the players running. As well, defensively don’t be anxious to go with the high pressing if we aren’t organised. I was telling him to try and keep our game plan and don’t let them do the superiority inside us.
Unai, John McGinn was seen talking a lot to the referee at the end of the game. Were the players upset with the officials about something?
I think the referee whistled well. I can’t refuse him anything. But with our frustration we have to face someone or something. I think today the referee… I told the referee assistant, I told him in the first half when the goal was checking for VAR, I told him if it’s not offside, it’s preempted your job. And it wasn’t.
You said there, you’ve got five games to get into Europe. What do you want to see from your team that you can secure European football in these next five games?
First, we have to win our matches, win points. There are other teams like Liverpool and Brighton, Brentford… We will have possibility if we win matches in the last four matches. But we are now thinking only about Wolves because Brighton have three matches less than us. It’s now a key moment for us and them to play for European places. It’s not normal, though, the circumstances that they are playing less matches than us. But it’s like that and we will play against them in the last match. If we get this match to play in the possibility in Europe, it would be fantastic. If we want to go it and to have the opportunity, we have to win matches before. Wolves away, Liverpool, Tottenham, they are tough matches but we are ready to do it and excited to have this opportunity.
Is there any frustration had you been [at Villa] at couple of weeks earlier, or the season was a couple of weeks longer, you’d probably definitely get to one of those [European] places given your trajectory has been so high…
Yes… but when you escape from the bottom it’s really difficult. It’s more difficult to be in the top 10 but the most difficult is to be in the European position and to win. That’s what we have been doing: we have to win and to win. That’s the most difficult aspect we have but we deserve it. We performed before and we were strong. At Man United, we didn’t play like we were competitive like the other matches we have been playing. It couldn’t be because they have very good players and defended more. In the first half we didn’t play or feel good and defended more than we had to do. It was not enough in the second half.
Just on the defence, how much did you feel about the risk vs reward being quite fine. You played a high line. Manchester United were offside a lot but there are advantages and disadvantages to that. How did you think it went?
Yes but we are trying to be consistent and trying as well to work our tactical way how we can get better in our performances. Being high in our back four, sometimes we are feeling very good and take more risks. Today was a very difficult match but a really good test because they have a very good system and players. They have very good passers and very good runners running behind us. Sometimes they were offside and sometimes not. It was tight but at the end there was a goal. We are doing more time well than bad.
