Aston Villa boss Unai Emery delivered a glowing assessment as he masterminded a 3-1 win over Man Utd in his first game in charge.
The 51-year-old took his first training session on Wednesday morning and so combined with his media obligations and other commitments in what must have been a hectic week, he certainly had his hands full in recent days.
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Despite that, he put together an excellent game plan to lead us to a vital win to kickstart his tenure immediately, while credit goes to the players too as they carried out those instructions brilliantly to secure all three points.
Emery was unsurprisingly pleased with the way things played out as there were many positives to take from the performance, both individually and collectively, but ultimately he also made an important point about this simply being the first game – or the first step – for Villa, as now we must follow this performance and result up and continue to improve.
“It was amazing to be here with our supporters in Villa Park,” Emery told VillaTV. “It’s the first day and I was so excited, and now I’m really happy. I believe in these players, and I know they have been underperforming. We have to take regularity in our way but sometimes they were showing the capacity.
“They may have been doing that before, but we have to play with regularity, be consistent, be disciplined, be organised and I think we made the first step today.”
“I am a privileged man to be here and to win against them. I enjoyed it a lot today. We were so focussed on our game plan. We were so strong with their (the fans) support.
“It’s only one step and we have to achieve regularity and we have to achieve being consistent in the next matches – at home and away. We have a lot of work to do.”
Given he reiterated that point constantly about Villa now needing to find consistency, he’ll be looking for his players to produce another big performance in midweek as we face Man Utd again in the Carabao Cup, before our final Premier League game before the World Cup break against Brighton next weekend.
Emery though deserves a huge amount of praise for the way in which he set us up tactically, both in and out of possession, as Villa looked much better prepared for what they faced and showed great organisation and discipline as well as creativity and flair to produce an all-round top display.
It was an ideal start to the Emery era, and hopefully it sets the tone and standard for what’s to come as we look to build on this and continue to improve.
