It would be fair to say that Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was as frustrated as we’ve ever seen him after our defeat at Monaco in the Champions League, and he had every reason to be that way.
Like every other team, we’ve seen some woeful performances over the past two years, thankfully much less than the good ones, but our display against the Ligue 1 side on Tuesday night was up there with the worst.
READ MORE: Five key talking points as disappointing Villa suffer defeat at Monaco
That was reflected in Emery’s post-match comments, as not only did the Basque coach look visibly annoyed and frustrated, but he was openly critical of himself and some of his players as we ultimately missed a big opportunity this week to solidify our place in the top-eight of the Champions League standings.
Instead, we now face a must-win game against Celtic next week and must hope that results elsewhere go our way to book a direct ticket through to the knockout stage, otherwise we’ll be facing a packed February with yet more fixtures and more strain being put on the squad.
As noted in his comments below, there were various aspects of the performance that irked Emery, and he was candid enough to admit that he got it wrong with a crucial decision in the latter stages too, but his ability to find solutions and get more out of his players will ultimately determine if we learn lessons from this or not, as our challenges are becoming increasingly obvious.
“If we want to be at this level, we have to try and score those chances we had,” Emery told reporters in his post-match press conference. “Even after that I was more or less positive. In the second half we started the same. We were horrible in set-pieces, we were horrible. We had seven corners and not one close to scoring. When we are playing games like today, it’s important to get three points because I think we lost the opportunity to get in the top eight. Today was the key.
“Then it is about building a team in the mentality I want. We are being demanding with the players we have and some are not following the plan we are doing. This is the objective I have now, trying to build the team as strong as possible with a mentality we are building progressively.
“I made a mistake when I decided to play with two strikers because in that moment we were more or less controlling the game. We were very weak in the middle and they were getting transition and went close to scoring the second ball. I took this decision trying to get better but I was watching and it was not working well.”
Looking at those missed chances first, if we want to compete against the top sides from around Europe, we simply can’t afford to be that wasteful in front of goal. Villa have scored nine goals in seven Champions League games thus far, giving us the joint second-lowest tally of the top 16 teams in the currents standings.
The positive is that we’re creating those opportunities, but if we don’t have a killer, ruthless end product to go with it, we’re going to encounter these problems again moving forward. Ollie Watkins, Leon Bailey and Morgan Rogers were all guilty of missing big chances, and they have to be more clinical.
Part of that issue also comes down our set-pieces as rightly pointed out by Emery, as we were woeful on Tuesday night, with Monaco goalkeeper Radoslaw Majecki coming out to comfortably collect our corners time after time.
Emery’s point on mentality is perhaps the most worrying though, as we’re deep into his tenure now, and if certain players aren’t yet playing with the right mentality or can’t follow and execute his gameplan effectively, that raises concerns over their futures if they can’t adapt and improve to align with the Villa boss.
It’s equally important not to overreact, but time will tell what that means from Emery, as judging from the video below, he was very frustrated with that aspect of it, and so it goes beyond defensive mistakes which is another major issue that needs fixing as we simply can’t continue to keep conceding soft, poor goals.
What we likely won’t see him do again any time soon is try to deploy Jhon Duran alongside Ollie Watkins up front. It once again looked ineffective in terms of them working as a pairing, but as he rightly pointed out, our shape and rhythm was entirely disrupted, and we progressively looked less likely to score after that change in the last 20 minutes or so.
Whether it’s simply a case of one or the other must play alone and lead the line or continuing to work on it tactically in training to make it a viable solution when the situation demands it be used to give us a different attacking dynamic, that is a problem for the Villa boss to solve, as both will want to play. That said, if they can’t finish their chances, it may become an easy choice for Emery in the coming weeks and months.
Reporter: What went wrong for Aston Villa’s players v Monaco?
Unai Emery: 👉🧠 #BBCFootball #UCL pic.twitter.com/92M5xD2Spo
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) January 21, 2025