Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was delighted with his side’s performance in our 2-1 win over Manchester City, particularly our effort in the second half.
Goals from Jhon Duran and Morgan Rogers ultimately secured the victory despite a late effort from Phil Foden, as that proved to merely be a consolation goal that couldn’t deny Villa a deserved win.
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Villa set the tone immediately as we came out with intensity and aggression and almost took the lead twice in the opening few minutes, and although the visitors went on to dominate possession and dictate in the first half, we showed the required quality to break the deadlock and double our lead after the interval.
Coupled with a strong defensive display from the entire team, it was a deserved three points for Villa, as we move above the reigning Premier League champions in the standings and go into the remainder of our Christmas schedule full of confidence.
It arguably also showed the importance of having a week to rest and prepare for the game rather than juggle our European commitments in midweek, as we look re-energised and resurgent in this game, and hopefully we can build momentum off it now and put together a strong run of form to end 2024.
Emery is evidently pleased with what he’s seeing from his side currently, as he had individual praise for both Duran and Rogers given the duo were decisive in this triumph for Villa.
“Always we are trying to be positive, in some matches we are maybe not performing as we want, but today we perform,” he said after the game, as quoted by BBC Sport. “We are feeling strong, here we played the first half very well, in the second half we kept possession more and getting in the box to score the second goal, we imposed and dominated more.”
On balancing game time for Ollie Watkins and Jhon Duran: “We are in the process with the players, keeping their consistency of playing. Jhon Duran today played fantastic, Watkins is fantastic as well, very important for us. Of course you have to work with both strikers, sometimes they play together. I am very happy with them.
On Morgan Rogers: “He played fantastic today, he is very important. Through him we are getting the performance back because he links strikers with midfielder and wingers. Today he was fantastic in the second half, connecting with strikers and scoring the goals. He has to add goals to his numbers, and today he was fantastic.
“We played 90 minutes in the way we were expecting. They were imposing and dominant in the first half, more than we wanted. Then in the second half we dominated more, avoiding their press, I think we played better. The second half we were playing with confidence, we imposed and we decided to win through domination of them.”
The building blocks for our win came through Emery and his tactical set-up for the encounter, with Boubacar Kamara partnered by Amadou Onana in our deeper midfield pivot, thus giving more freedom to Youri Tielemans to play in a more advanced role.
Similarly to how his tactical tweak helped inspire a much-improved performance against RB Leipzig in the Champions League earlier this month, Emery struck once again in this clash, and he’ll be delighted with the response and execution of the gameplan that he got from the Villa players.