Aston Villa fought back from two goals down to secure a 3-2 win over Everton, and Unai Emery was unsurprisingly delighted with the response from his players.
Villa controlled proceedings in the early stages, but we conceded two poor goals as Dwight McNeil gave Everton the lead after 16 minutes, before Dominic Calvert-Lewin doubled their advantage just 10 minutes later.
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Importantly, and very impressively, Villa didn’t panic or abandon our approach and style of play, as we remained calm, patient and continued to probe.
Eventually, we earned our rewards as our methodical breaking down of Everton yielded results, with Ollie Watkins bagging a brace to draw us level, before Jhon Duran came off the bench to score yet another winning goal in the 76th minute to complete our comeback.
As always, Emery was delighted for the Villa fans who he was keen to single out for praise again as they continued to back the players despite our deficit, while there are naturally going to be various aspects of the performance that he will want to improve on too.
“I’m very happy because for the supporters it was amazing,” he said, as per VillaTV. “Losing 2-0, we were playing well and we were dominating, imposing our positioning and creating chances. We didn’t score and we conceded two opportunities to them and they scored.
“The supporters were really, really understanding of how we could come back the result by being patient, playing with our structure and not changing anything.
“We were creating chances and we scored one goal in the first half but we created more chances. In the second half, we got the same structure and the supporters were helping us and supporting us.
“We came back and then conceded some good chances to them. We are being demanding in our way and today I have to be happy and try to continue the good things we did in our process as a team while avoiding some circumstances we conceded today.”
Meanwhile, Emery also praised Duran after he made another decisive impact off the bench, while it was great to see Watkins end his goal drought and get back on the scoresheet, in what would have been a huge confidence boost for the England international.
He should have perhaps bagged a hat-trick as Villa missed other opportunities too, but the same could of said of Everton who had their chances to take something from the game.
The Villa boss is still seemingly working on the duo playing as an attacking pairing up top, but individually, they were decisive in this one and helped us secure an important win going into our Champions League opener in midweek, and it’s hoped our early-season momentum will help us to start our European campaign on a positive note.
