Fixtures
- Aston Villa Vs. Manchester United – Sun, Feb 11th 2024, 16:30
Unai Emery felt Aston Villa had the chances to be successful against Manchester United at Villa Park on Sunday.
The head coach saw his side come away empty-handed after a late winner from the visitors, succumbing to a 2-1 loss.
Emery said a mixture of United goalkeeper André Onana and a failure to be clinical in front of goal cost his team.
“We speak about the result and we are frustrated,” he said.
“We were being successful here at home in a lot of matches, playing a lot of matches worse than we played tonight against Manchester United.
“We created chances but we weren’t clinical. Their goalkeeper played a fantastic match and we lost a very good opportunity.
“This is the way to build our structure stronger and to try and control the game in the structure we are progressively trying to build. We did it.
“The plan before the match we were speaking about in the dressing room and the players did it. Sometimes it was goalkeeper, sometimes we weren’t clinical, but we controlled the game and avoided the transitions.
“We conceded a few chances to score but they are Manchester United and they have very good players. We have to be proud of our work, proud of our supporters, and we are fifth in the league.
“We lost a very good opportunity today to do a bigger gap with them but we keep going.”
Villa’s advantage over United has been cut to five points after Sunday’s result, but Emery’s team sit outside of the top four by a single point.
The squad head to Fulham next weekend as they look to improve on a run of two wins from five Premier League games.
Emery said: “We lost the opportunity today, but we are going to try and recover quickly against Fulham away and try to be consistent.
“We are continuing to build the team with our mentality. Sometimes we are not being successful like today, but we have to accept it and understand how we can be stronger.”
