Aston Villa secured three valuable points in a 2-0 win over Tottenham on Friday night to keep our Champions League qualification hopes alive.
Although we lacked tempo and creative quality in the opening hour of the encounter, Ezri Konsa broke the deadlock from a well-worked set-piece, and Villa didn’t look back from that point onwards as we sealed a vital victory.
READ MORE: Villa to assess top talent in pre-season ahead of crucial decision after impressive loan stint
Boubacar Kamara doubled our lead shortly after with his first Premier League goal, and so it was a solid performance from Villa on a night where all that mattered was the win.
While we still require a favourable result elsewhere to boost our top-five hopes, we’ll travel to Old Trafford to face Manchester United on the final day of the season still in the hunt for Champions League football, and Emery was delighted with his players after our latest win, as we continue to impress at home having made Villa Park a real fortress this season.
“Good evening. Very happy,” he said, as quoted by BBC Sport. “We won and we are on a run but still have work to do. We have to ready and be consistent. We finished the season here with our supporters and our energy and our wishes to be in Europe. We still have chances to play in the Champions League.
“They [Spurs] competed well and did a fantastic job. We were consistent, demanding and when we scored the first goal, they gave up. Good luck to them in the final.
“We needed to manage the 90 minutes and we worked it fantastic. We are being demanding in this moment. We can get Champions League, fantastic.
“We are wishing to continue in the season we are doing. We are now in a good moment. We try to play well and in our best moment. Some players are enjoying it now.
“We are going to continue in our plan. We will work tomorrow and have Sunday and Monday off.”
As noted above, it doesn’t yet appear as though the race is in Villa’s hands at the time of writing, but ultimately all we can do is win out through to the end of the season, and we’ll finish where we deserve to be.
Importantly though, we’re seeing the players deliver in a crunch period of the campaign to show their character and ability to deal with the emotions that come with such a tense scenario with so much on the line, and that will hopefully help us in the future if we can raise our level and continue to compete for major honours.
All the focus will switch to Man Utd in the coming days, and it’s very much a case of one down, one more to go.