Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was left disappointed after our 2-1 defeat to Everton in the third round of the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night.
Goals from James Garner and Dominic Calvert-Lewin gave the visitors a two-goal lead, and although Boubacar Kamara struck late on, it was a woeful overall performance from Villa that was duly punished.
READ MORE: Villa player ratings vs Everton: Woeful display as duo poor in defeat
Having been sloppy throughout and lacking in urgency and quality, the result was fair on reflection, and so there is real disappointment over our exit from a cup competition that we would have been targeting success in this season.
Coupled with our defeat in Europe last week, it does raise question marks over some of the squad players in the group, as well as some of Emery’s decision-making in terms of his rotation and where he plays certain individuals.
While the Villa boss does make a valid point in that he has to rotate and utilise his squad depth, it’s on those coming in to perform better. However, if they continue to let the side down with below-par performances, it will continue to hurt us and build pressure given the expectations for this season.
Nevertheless, Emery was more level-headed and calm about the entire situation in his post-match interview, as he discussed the disappointment of the defeat, but also the need to make changes.
“We are disappointed with some mistakes we made,” he is quoted as telling the media. “We are trying to go forward building the team. We have to use some players and give them opportunities to get confidence.
“I have to be demanding with them. Dendoncker was out of pre-season and it is not easy to recover. It is necessary to give him chances and minutes to take it. He will need more. Jhon Duran is young. It was a plan to play 45 minute with McGinn.”
“We need to give Lucas Digne some rest and we tried it as well because at the moment we are not ready to playing Alex Moreno. We need to use different players and he did well there.”
Meanwhile, he spoke to VillaTV after the game too, and echoed those same sentiments in terms of having to use his squad, but bemoaned the unusual mistakes that we made in the game that were punished.
He also made an important point on our encounter with Brighton this weekend, as our response in that game will be crucial now as the pressure could easily build with our next European outing to follow shortly after too.
It will certainly be a difficult test against the Seagulls though, and so if Villa don’t significantly improve on this performance, we’ll likely have more problems on Saturday, and so we simply have to raise our game.
“We feel disappointed with the result,” Emery said. “Some of the mistakes we made tonight were not normal, but we have to try to add some players into the team and try to get balance with them in every competition we are going to face.
“We started at the beginning controlling the game – not being very efficient at getting into their box but controlling with ball possession.
“The injury to Leon Bailey and their goal was when we were a little bit nervous. In the first half, we tried to change something to get responsibility for some players.
“In the second half, we started well but only for three or four minutes as we made another mistake and they scored. Then it was very difficult to come back and get a result.
“We tried and we played better, controlling the game better than the first half. We created some chances and scored one goal, but it wasn’t enough.
“We have to move on quickly and thinking about Saturday at home against Brighton. It’s going to be very important here at home with our supporters, trying to keep the same structure, tactically, that we were doing.”
