Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was pleased with his side after our 2-1 win over Nottingham Forest, but was less impressed with our performance in the second half.
Goals from Morgan Rogers and Donyell Malen put us in a strong position after just 15 minutes, as we dominated the early stages and produced an impressive first-half display to deserve our lead.
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However, our opponents struck early in the second half and continued to create chances as the game went on, and although we were able to hold out for three crucial points, the performance after the break would have been concerning to an extent, particularly after such a positive start to the encounter.
Naturally, Emery remained balanced in his assessment as he praised Villa’s start to the game as we were excellent early on and showed the right intensity and intent to control the game with plenty of possession, but he also didn’t shy away from pointing out the flaws we showed after the break as the visitors clawed their way back into it as we became increasingly nervy and lost our ability to control proceedings.
“Yes, big win,” he said, as per BBC Sport. “We started dominating. They were playing tactically, a medium-low block and we started dominating because they were not pressing high, not getting out. We were creating chances and we scored goals.
“The second half, I am not happy. They were changing their tactics and taking more duels aggressively, pressing higher and we were not dominating like we have to.
“This victory is very important. Very happy with the victory. Very demanding of myself to improve things within… I am happy because we have three points more.
“Good to win today but there’s still work to do. We have got all nine points from the past three matches and it’s very important that we are reducing the distance to the team in front. It’s still very difficult to achieve as our objective is to get Europe again through the Premier League. We enjoy competing in the Champions League and the FA Cup, but the Premier League is the most important because it is through the league that we can reach our objective for the next season.
“The players are focused in every match – be it FA Cup, Champions League or Premier League. We have to manage the players intelligently to get the best out of them. Sometimes they might not start and sometimes we can get an impact from them as substitutes. This is most important – to see how we can be stronger as a team in each match.
“We played fantastic in the first half hour. We dominated and had the chances. In the second half, we tried to keep possession and we still had chances to score. But they scored once but we have to try to be demanding on how we want to dominate and impose our stature tactically.”
Ultimately, we secured three fundamental points as we continue to make ground on those above us in the Premier League table, and also continue to apply pressure on those around us in the standings in the battle to secure European football next season.
At this crunch stage of the campaign, Villa must continue to take it one game at a time and continue to pick up critical wins, and while our focus will switch to the Champions League in midweek, Emery once again made it clear that our primary objective is to finish as high as possible in the league.
Having made eight changes to the side that won at Brighton in midweek, it showed our strength in depth with several key individuals now back after spells out due to injury, and so with our FA Cup semi-final to look forward to as well, it’s hoped that we have the quality across the squad to maintain our strong finish to the season and to achieve our objectives across multiple fronts between now and the end of the campaign.
While it’s still too early to definitively say that Villa are peaking at just the right time as there is still so much to play for this season, we’re certainly on the right track given our results over the past few weeks, and hopefully that will continue.
