Fixtures
- Aston Villa Vs. Ajax – Thu, Mar 14th 2024, 20:00
Unai Emery addressed the media from Bodymoor Heath on Wednesday afternoon.
Aston Villa’s head coach faced questions from the assembled journalists ahead of his team’s Europa Conference League Round of 16 second leg tie against Ajax.
Here’s what he had to say…
On team news…
“He (Jacob Ramsey) is not available for tomorrow. Hopefully it’s not for a long time but not for tomorrow.
“We are going to try to wait and see every day how he is doing. He is not available for tomorrow and I don’t know about Sunday.”
On reacting to defeat against Tottenham…
“Tomorrow we are going to try to show it [our reaction]. We are playing at Villa Park, and Villa Park is always special.
“We will need our supporters to help. The fans have to try to push us to get our performance.
“It’s going to be very difficult, and when the players are feeling their supporters supporting them they are feeling comfortable and strong at home. That is the objective tomorrow.
“We have to try to transmit them our style, our idea and skills and be competitive like we are usually doing. It’s a good opportunity to get a good feeling with our supporters.”
On the challenge posed by Ajax…
“It will be very difficult. They have some experienced players and some young players, and they competed against us very well.
“I respect them a lot. With the players, we are analysing and speaking in our meetings a lot about how difficult the match will be tomorrow and how difficult it is to play in Europe.
“For Ajax, it’s a very important match as well. We are going to be humble in our preparation and then try to impose our game plan and play better than the match we played there.
“We drew there and it was, more or less, a good result but it’s not enough. It was a good result for them as well. We have to improve a lot of things we did there.”
On the first leg in Amsterdam…
“They showed us that they want to get something in this competition and that they want to beat us.
“This is a very good example. Playing the first leg, we got very good information from them and they got very good information from us because we didn’t compete 100% like I wanted.”
On embracing Europe this season…
“Europe is prestigious and it’s a way for a trophy. Europe is adding another objective in our season and that’s very important for the players, for the club and for myself.
“We are doing a very big effort last year to get it. This year we are progressively playing better because we started losing in Warsaw – we started with a win against Hibernian but in the group we were losing.
“Now is a key moment and a very good opportunity if we can play thinking to beat Ajax and get something important in this competition.”
