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Unai Emery makes admission about Aston Villa players' 'performance level' after Liverpool defeat
Unai Emery is confident Aston Villa will return to the level they showed last season after suffering consecutive Premier League defeats for the first time in 18 months by losing to Liverpool 2-0 at Anfield.
Darwin Nunez opened the scoring in the 20th minute by applying the finish to a sweeping counter-attack which came after a Villa corner. Chances for Amadou Onana, Diego Carlos and Morgan Rogers came and went before Mohamed Salah doubled the lead for Liverpool late on.
"Liverpool dominated sometimes but they did not have a lot of clear chances to score. We did our work and we had the chances to score in the first half, in the second half, and we played more or less in the way I wanted.
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"We have to keep improving, recover some players who have just come back after long injuries. Some players are not in the same performance level as last year but today they were a bit better.
"The league is tight, there are a lot of teams performing very well and we have to accept that we need to improve. We are under our level from last year a little bit but I am still confident."
He added: "This year a lot of players have come back from long injuries. We have to try to keep the same positive attitude and mentality and try to accept sometimes results that we have had this week happen."
Villa currently sit eighth in the Premier League after 11 matches, but could drop as low as tenth if Tottenham and Newcastle United both win on Sunday.
