Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was pleased with our win over Lille, but is already shifting his focus to the task ahead in the second leg of our Europa Conference League quarter-final tie.
Goals from Ollie Watkins and John McGinn put us in a commanding position, but Emiliano Martinez was decisive yet again as he produced a string of crucial saves to deny the Ligue 1 outfit.
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While Villa were wasteful at times too and could have built a bigger advantage, the visitors showed their threat in the final third, and so taking a lead into the reverse fixture was an important achievement from our perspective as we now have something to defend in what will undoubtedly be a raucous atmosphere in Lille.
Emery was keen to emphasise the positives from the performance and the importance of securing an advantage to take into the second leg, but he is fully aware of the difficulty of the test that lies ahead, and he’ll now try to mastermind two winning game-plans for crunch encounters with Arsenal and Lille over the next few days.
“The result was very tight and it was a tight match, very difficult,” Emery told VillaTV. “We prepared the match understanding and respecting them, and we won. We have to be, more or less, happy and respecting them even more than we were.
“They will be strong in their stadium and now we have to try to play 90 minutes thinking how we can analyse the match deeply and better playing there. We have to try to get a good result there.
“The way we are playing is very positive for the players and giving opportunities to score goals and get assists.
“We have to continue practicing and building the team. This is the next step, first on Sunday against Arsenal and then in the second leg against Lille.
“It’s a very good opportunity and we have to be excited, motivated and try to recover our energy.
“We have to prepare the two matches as best as possible.”
It was an important result off the back of the disappointment of our draw against Brentford last weekend, but there will still be areas of concern for Emery to address given the chances that Lille had over the course of the game.
As noted above, Martinez was the clear Man of the Match given the interventions he made, and with the visitors also having a goal chalked off for offside, they will pose a serious threat at home that we have to deal with more effectively.
If we don’t tighten things up at the back, we’ll certainly make life more difficult for ourselves against Arsenal on Sunday, and given we need a massive defensive display in France next week, things have to improve if we’re to take two major steps towards achieving our objectives this season.