Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was left frustrated after our 4-2 loss to Olympiacos in the first leg of our Europa Conference League semi-final tie.
It was a disappointing night as we gave ourselves a huge challenge next week in Greece in the return leg, having conceded poor goals and failed to control the game in the way we would have wanted.
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The visitors raced into a two-goal lead in the opening 30 minutes, and although Villa launched a stirring comeback to level the scores shortly after half-time, we immediately fell behind again and now have to produce a big shift to keep our hopes of silverware alive.
Unsurprisingly, Emery was frustrated with the performance and result, and he explained that we didn’t perform with the style that he’s been working tirelessly to implement and that has been fundamental to our progress to this point.
Instead, we were dragged into a high-tempo, back-and-forth encounter, and that ultimately suited the visitors more who were able to hurt us with balls over the top, while we grew more erratic and sloppy as the game went on, barring a good period either side of the half-time interval.
“I’m frustrated, really frustrated, but I have to accept it,” he told VillaTV. “We didn’t play well. We built here at home one style, one idea that’s so, so strong.
“Today, we lost. Of course, sometimes we can lose but today in the key moment to get something in Europe, we lost a good opportunity.
“We deserved to lose and they deserved to win. We are going to try to recover quick because next week we have the opportunity to recover the result.
“We have the Premier League and it’s very important on Sunday. As always, in 38 matches is the most important because it’s where you can feel strong in 38 matches being consistent.
“We get our first objective through it. Of course, when we are getting into a semi-final it’s a very good opportunity. We were struggling a lot against Lille and we won that round at the end in the penalty shootout.
“Today, we lost but hopefully next week we can feel better, play better and try to play with personality and without losing the ball like today.
“We need calm and to get our new challenge next week. We are playing at Brighton on Sunday and it’s our focus 100%.”
Emery was seen giving out stern instructions to his players during a brief break in play in the first half, as he was clearly unhappy with how we were playing.
While we struggled to deal with the high press from Olympiacos and their organisation and shape made it difficult for us to play through, we certainly didn’t show enough patience, quality and decisiveness to make the scoreline look very different.
There is confidence in our ability to score goals in Greece next week, but ultimately we have to be so much better defensively and in our push to control the game if we are to successfully overturn our deficit.
It’s only natural that the Villa boss was frustrated with what he saw, and now it’s on the players to rediscover our winning form, structure and style of play to hopefully secure fourth place on Sunday before trying to turn things around against Olympiacos.
