Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was left disappointed after our 2-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest on Sunday, but took positives from the performance.
Such is the standard being set by Villa so far this season, the sense of disappointment is amplified when things don’t go our way, just as they didn’t this weekend, as we were well short of our best.
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Villa conceded early in both halves which would have been a huge frustration as it gave us a lot to do in terms of constantly having to chase the game, and that was a result of mistakes and poor defending too. Despite dominating possession and creating openings in the second half, we were unable to take our chances to turn it around.
The crucial challenge now will be to learn from this, correct our mistakes and make these type of performances and results as rare as possible, as we missed our chance to move into the top four in the Premier League.
Nevertheless, although Emery was disappointed with certain aspects, particularly our own mistakes which contributed to the loss, he was also keen to highlight the positives too as we look to bounce back this week.
“It is very hard to accept the result,” he told the media, as per BBC Sport. “We made some mistakes. We conceded early, but for another 80 minutes we played with a good mentality, to try and score.
“The second half they scored another early goal. After this we were controlling the game, creating chances and getting corners. It is very difficult when the other team score first. They defended deeply.
“We are fifth in the league, we have 22 points, of course if we could achieve the three points today we would be better. I am proud of the players, before this match I was very proud of the players.
“We took this match as a challenge to get the top four teams, we didn’t achieve it and there is still work to do to try and correct the things we did today with some mistakes.”
Villa face AZ Alkmaar in the Europa Conference League on Thursday night before hosting Fulham next Sunday as we now look to produce a strong response and get back on track quickly.
That said, this will also be an opportunity for Emery to analyse our performance and find ways to improve, as particularly when we fall behind and face sides defending deeper, we encounter more problems.
The process of continuing to learn, develop and improve will be key to our progression, and so as disappointing as this performance and result are, we’ll hopefully be stronger for it.
“I’m disappointed,” he added when speaking to VillaTV. “This is the moment we can analyse one year since we arrived here; how we’ve progressed, what we achieved last year to be in the European positions.
“Our start this season as well was tough – Newcastle, Liverpool. We were keeping our very good performances at home and taking points. We were fifth in the table.
“Today we had a very good opportunity to try and be in the top four. We didn’t achieve it and we played with some mistakes, trying to come back and get a result.
“It’s very difficult away in the Premier League when the other team scores first. They were with their supporters and they were excited.
“We created chances, we created corners and we avoided the transition but it was not enough to win.
“Every match we have to learn and every match we have to be very demanding. I’m going to take my responsibility and correct the things that we didn’t do like we’d prepared before the game. I only want to try to support the players. We lost today but we need to remember a lot of good things that we are doing this season.”