What Unai Emery said in assessment of Villa’s win over Bologna

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery praised his side after our 2-0 win over Bologna in the Champions League on Tuesday night.

Villa overcame a difficult opening period in the game to start to gradually take control and impose ourselves more effectively, and that starts with Emery’s gameplan and in-game management.

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The Villa boss was keen to praise our reaction to the early vulnerability we showed, and as we made it three wins in three in the Champions League along with three clean sheets, he had every reason to be beaming in his post-match interview.

Youri Tielemans noted in his comments after the game that Emery had essentially challenged the players to find a way to get past Bologna’s man-to-man marking approach, and while it may have taken a little bit of time to adapt and adjust, we ultimately got the job done and now sit top of the standings.

“We are playing seriously, we are playing focused, responsible and the team is progressing and mature in everything,” he told TNT Sports. “We tried to break the press man to man. We conceded some things in the first 15 minutes but then reacted very well.

“It is always difficult at home in Europe. We have had to try and be consistent in our gameplan for 90 minutes and I think we did that today.”

Meanwhile, Emery was also questioned on Duran as he cut a frustrated figure after being substituted straight after he scored to make it 2-0, but much like Tielemans, the Villa boss laughed it off and insisted that the Colombian international simply wanted to stay on the pitch and try to get another goal.

As he so often does, the Basque coach wasn’t particularly keen on singling out one player for praise in a certain position, and so he expressed that he was pleased with Ollie Watkins too as both of his strikers are in good form and making crucial contributions to our positive start to the campaign.

“They are working well,” he added. “The commitment to help the team with quality and trying to understand as well. He [Duran] scored the goal and it was fantastic and he was wanting more because he was thinking he could score more goals. He did very good work and the last minutes is for Watkins and keep going,”

Our focus now switches to Bournemouth on Saturday, which will no doubt be another tough game. However, we’ll hopefully go into it in good shape to compete and ultimately come out as winners, and with our strength in depth, we have the options at Emery’s disposal to change things if necessary.

It’s certainly an exciting time for Villa as we continue to showcase our ability to compete at the top level in Europe, and there is a sense that although Emery is fine-tuning our play and we’re becoming increasingly mature and a well-oiled winning machine, there is still so much more improvement and development to come.