Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was delighted after watching his side secure a 3-0 win over Hibernian on Thursday night to qualify for the group stage of the Europa Conference League.
Goals from Jhon Duran, Leon Bailey and Matty Cash ensured we advance after an 8-0 aggregate win, having dominated over the course of the two legs to deservedly progress beyond the play-off round.
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While Villa will discover our group opponents in Friday’s draw, Emery was not only delighted with the performance on the night, but also with his squad having successfully achieved one of our main objectives to start the season.
It will hopefully serve as an important experience for this group with many lacking in that department in terms of participation in European competition previously, while it will also give us vital indications on how to manage the schedule with such a quick turnaround between games.
In turn, what could have been a tricky tie was dealt with in comprehensive and professional fashion, and Emery was unsurprisingly very happy with the outcome.
“I’m very, very happy because we are finishing last season by qualifying for the group stage,” he told VillaTV. “For me, it’s very important to be in Europe; I think for the club as well and the supporters.
“We can enjoy and be excited about a new way in Europe since 2008/09 when Aston Villa last played in the group stage in Europe.
“We won the tie in Scotland, but the supporters were with us today and the stadium was full. We really enjoyed it.
“For us, it’s about trying to keep the same atmosphere we created last season in the Premier League. Today, everything was thinking about finishing last season because we hadn’t qualified for Europe directly.
“We needed to finish like we did today. The performance was good. We wanted to qualify being consistent, building our idea and our style to control the game.
“We got a clean sheet and the result was very good. Now we are going to think about Liverpool on Sunday.”
That’s now four consecutive wins for Villa across all competitions since that 5-1 defeat to Newcastle Utd on the opening weekend of the Premier League campaign, and we’ve scored 15 goals and conceded just one in that run.
It’s hoped that we can sign off with another victory at Anfield before the international break, as that would ultimately wrap up a brilliant response to that early setback, as well as with the injury blows that we suffered as Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia will miss most, if not all, of the season.
While there is still a long way to go this year, the signs are positive as we try to build on the progression we saw last season, and Emery will hope to continue to get more from his squad as we look to compete on multiple fronts for silverware in the coming months.
For now, we wait to see who we will battle it out with to advance to the knockout stage of the Europa Conference League, with the group stage getting underway on September 21, with the final outing of the six scheduled to be played on December 14.
