Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was delighted with our 2-0 win over Chelsea on Saturday, but was immediately focused on our next game as we continued our fine form.
Goals from Ollie Watkins and John McGinn secured all three points at Stamford Bridge, as Villa produced a resilient and clinical performance while also riding our luck at times too as we registered our fourth win in our last five games.
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Further, that’s now five unbeaten in the league, while we’ve scored nine goals and conceded just one in that run.
Chelsea will be frustrated with their inability to take their chances with the Villa defence and Emiliano Martinez producing a superb display, but we were certainly good value for our victory having dug in and showed quality at both ends of the pitch in key moments to come out on top.
Emery was thrilled with our defensive display and was full of praise for that aspect of our performance, but he was eager to focus on following this impressive result up against Leicester City in midweek.
“We are happy but I think in the balance as well with this three points we are thinking we are now in the top 10,” he is quoted as saying by BBC Sport. “But we play on Tuesday as well so we cannot stop, we have to keep going and be competitive like today.
“We won and we were speaking how we have to be competitive and clever in the mind, we need to be offensively good and defensively good and brilliant like we were today.
“We are in the top 10, now we have to keep it. We have to play on Tuesday but first we rest and analyse this game. Then we have to be competitive against Leicester and not stop in our ambition.
“It was amazing today defensively, the commitment from every player was amazing. We have to understand sometimes to play good we have to be brilliant defensively. I think we are improving, we are as well being consistent and competitive away.
“Everybody is in good commitment to work. Confidence is the consequence of practicing and practicing with yourself. The only way I know is to practice, be demanding and think 100% football.”
Emery was also asked about our hopes of securing European qualification, as our win not only moved us up to ninth place in the standings, but we’re now just two points adrift of sixth spot.
That said, Brighton and Liverpool have games in hand on us, and so our focus will no doubt remain on ourselves and what we can do, and we’ll ultimately have to see how things play out elsewhere.
While it’s perhaps too ambitious to look any further ahead than that, Emery is keeping everyone humble and guarding against complacency having put ourselves in this position, and while he of course hopes to see us continue our progression and climb the table to compete for Europe, he was adamant that it will be difficult and a top 10 finish is still our objective.
“[To qualify for Europe is] very difficult,” he added. “But if we keep winning points then maybe we can keep adding a new objective. Hopefully yes.
“It’s not easy to come here. We prepared for the match thinking we might struggle, which we did at times in the first half. We started very well the first 20 minutes, and then after our goal the defence and the goalkeeper were very important.
“At half time we discussed that sometimes you have to struggle before you can score, to be mentally clever to know that sometimes that is the way you win. We spoke about how we could better and manage their attacks, which I think we managed to do well in the second half.
“It will be very, very difficult to challenge for Europe. Our objective is to be in the top 10, which we currently are. But from Tuesday onwards, we need to make sure we stay there.”
