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A seething Unai Emery questioned the mentality of some of his Aston Villa players and conceded his latest attempt to partner Ollie Watkins and Jhon Durán backfired after they blew an opportunity to qualify automatically for the Champions League last 16.
Emery accused several of his Villa players of “not following the plan” after an insipid 1-0 defeat in Monaco. Asked to elaborate on his comments, the Villa manager tapped his temple with his index finger and said: “We want it and we need it.” He added: “We are being demanding with the players we have and some are not following the plan we are doing. This is the objective I have now, to try to build the team as strong as possible with a mentality we are building.”
Emery appeared to absolve the majority of his squad of blame and praised the professionalism of Emi Buendía, who impressed on his first start since October and had been available for loan this month. “Morgan [Rogers] was a little bit sick,” he said in response to a question about tiredness. “I think [Boubacar] Kamara, [Youri] Tielemans, [Ezri] Konsa, [Matty] Cash, [Emi] Martínez and Tyrone [Mings] played doing everything we were planning.”
Durán, the subject this week of a speculative bid from West Ham, replaced Leon Bailey early in the second half but had little impact alongside Watkins.
Villa failed to carve out many chances despite Watkins and Duran, arguably two of the best strikers in Europe, both being on the pitch. “It didn’t work well,” Emery said. “It was my mistake. I made a mistake when I decided to play with two strikers and we lost our positioning.
“ We were very weak in the middle and they were close to scoring the second goal until that moment. We deserved more until the 70th minute. Until that moment we were more or less controlling the game. It is my challenge because both are very good players but today it didn’t work well.”
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Emery also bemoaned his side’s failure at set pieces. Wilfried Singo scored the only goal from a corner, after Martinez thwarted Thilo Kehrer. “We were horrible today in set pieces: we had seven corners and we didn’t have one good corner to try to score,” the manager said. “We are playing in matches like today for a very important three points. I think we lost the opportunity to be in the top eight. Today was the key to get it.”
