Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was pleased with our 2-1 win over West Ham, but lamented our unwanted habit of conceding goals.
Villa were desperately poor in the first half of our FA Cup third-round tie, as we failed to pose any sort of goalscoring threat against the Hammers, who to their credit, were well organised and disciplined.
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However, we certainly made it easier for them with a lack of energy, intensity, urgency, movement and creativity in the opening 45 minutes, and so something undoubtedly needed to change after the interval.
Fortunately, that change came as Villa immediately looked to press forward and get on the front foot more, playing with tempo as we moved the ball around quicker to shift the visitors out of their shape, while still remaining patient in our search for a route back into the game.
Goals from Amadou Onana and Morgan Rogers in the space of five minutes ultimately turned it around and booked our place in the next round, and while that pleased Emery as it’s an important win, the Villa boss is clearly still irritated by our inability to stop conceding soft goals.
“Happy, but we were trying to set an objective of not conceding an easy goal, but we did it early again,” he said in his post-match interview, as per BBC Sport. “But we responded well. We didn’t concede chances again more or less. The players showed our wishes to do something in the competition.
“We are conceding a lot of goals, but our most important objective is to win.
“We try to be strong here, to have a fortress. We have done what we have done all season. We responded well and controlled the game more or less.
“Of course it is very important which team we will face after today. But now we focus, because we are in three competitions and we want to get something in the Champions League, in the Premier League and now in the FA Cup.
“I am very happy because we did a very good match. We’re getting stronger and more imposing. We conceded one goal. One of our work to do is to try to concede less goals. But like the season is going, as we progress we get better. We finished strong.
“To win is very important for the confidence. We gave players minutes as well. We are happy because this competition as well, historically, very important.
“In 90 minutes we were trying to be clinical. We didn’t do this in the first half, but in the second half we were better. We were dominating more and pushing more. We were more clinical. we respected this competition and respected the opponent.
“We did our work like we planned.”
The defensive side of our game must improve still, as when we fall behind, it often leads to us struggling to break teams down who are content to then sit back in numbers, pack the middle of the pitch and make life increasingly difficult for us to find a breakthrough.
However, equally as important is not playing into their hands in those situations, as so much of our play was predictable and sluggish with all of it in front of West Ham to defend effectively, with not enough width, stretching of the pitch and tempo to actually force them to shift out of their shape and system.
Things changed in the second half as we had more movement and a quicker tempo to our passing which created openings and more chances, and so with more and more teams playing against us in this way, we have to learn lessons from the first minute to the last and be more ruthless in how we deal with them.