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What Unai Emery said in assessment of Villa salvaging draw vs Leeds

 Sumeet Paul  February 21, 2026
Aston Villa boss Unai Emery provided a balanced assessment of our disappointing 1-1 draw with Leeds United on Saturday.

Anton Stach put the visitors ahead at Villa Park after 31 minutes with a stunning free-kick from distance, and Villa struggled for much of the game to produce enough quality to pose a threat of our own and get back into the contest.

Fortunately, Tammy Abraham scored an equaliser late on to salvage a point, but it was another disappointing performance and result at home, as we continue to drop points in the race for Champions League qualification.

 

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With Chelsea dropping points too, it perhaps isn’t as damaging a result as it could have potentially been, and Villa do remain third in the Premier League standings with a gap over our rivals.

That is the positive side of things that Emery wanted to focus on which is fair, but the Villa boss will surely know that our performances have to improve as we’ve been poor in recent weeks, which has coincided with the loss of Boubacar Kamara, John McGinn and Youri Tielemans to injury.

With Kamara done for the season and both McGinn and Tielemans still weeks away from returning, solutions have to be found with those available for selection, but Emery was keen to highlight that we remain in a good position after matchday 27.

“It’s not the best result, it’s not worst. When we were losing in the minute 89, 1-0, to draw this match was really something fantastic,” Emery said, as per VillaTV.

“We must be positive. We must accept this result in the Premier League because every team (is) showing their capacity, how difficult is the Premier League, for us, for other teams.

“How we are third, still being there, how we achieved today one point like how we were, I think should be something (we) must accept like a positive result and keep going forward, because we are going to try to be consistent in 38 matches.

“Now we are (on) the day 27, we’re still being third. Of course, we lost some points at home, normally we weren’t losing before, but I am positive with how we are going to continue working, building the team.

“We are going to recover again, our good mood here at home with our supporters and with our structure, tactically and individually.”

Meanwhile, Abraham followed up his goal against Newcastle United in the FA Cup last weekend with another in this game, and while we need both him and Ollie Watkins firing between now and the end of the season, our January recruit is undoubtedly making a very strong case to secure a starting berth moving forward.

Time will tell if he’s done enough to get the nod ahead of Watkins for our trip to Wolves on Friday night, but Emery is evidently delighted and impressed with his impact thus far.

“Fantastic,” he added. “He scored last week, he scored today.

“He’s here to compete with (Ollie) Watkins, sometimes one, sometimes another. Something they must play together, like they did today, and they must try to add numbers for us.

“Numbers for other strikers normally is scoring or assists, but it’s good, how he’s being committed to help us like he did today.”