Emery pleased to mark anniversary match with a victory

Unai Emery was pleased to mark Aston Villa’s 150^th anniversary match with a victory against West Ham United in the FA Cup third round.

The manager saw his team fall behind after nine minutes before they staged a second-half comeback and struck twice to win 2-1.

It was the perfect result on a night that saw the club come together to mark a magnificent milestone almost 150 years to the day since our first-ever recorded match.

“I’m very happy. The 150th anniversary we were here celebrating,” Emery said.

“We can be happy with this victory and share it with our supporters. We played progressively getting better.

“We started by conceding one goal and this is the most important thing that we are trying to correct – don’t concede an easy goal at the beginning of the match like we did today.

“Progressively we were feeling comfortable on the field and we were dominating and controlling the game.

“We came back the result clearly in the second half and we have to be happy for the anniversary as well.

“Aston Villa have won this trophy seven times and this trophy means something important for our supporters. Hopefully we can be consistent.”

West Ham proved a tough nut to crack in B6, setting up to defend deep from the off and attempting to catch Villa on the counter-attack.

And while they struggled to create chances in the opening 45 minutes, Emery’s men came up with the answers in the second half to secure a place in round four.

He said: “Sometimes we have to control the game with good positioning and be patient because the opponent is defending well in a medium or low block.

“We have to try to be patient and we have to identify and teach the supporters how we want to impose, to dominate and threaten the opponent with our idea.

“We have to be patient and then when we can break their defensive spaces, we have to threaten them and we did it more in the second half.

“They conceded chances in transition, and we did very good work progressively in the match and better in the second half.”