Unai Emery makes brutal Aston Villa admission ahead of Celtic showdown as Spaniard fumes at Champions League defeat
Unai Emery was left incensed by Aston Villa's display in their 1-0 defeat to Monaco and admits that they may have blown their chance to claim a top eight finish in the Champions League.
The Premier League side fell to a 1-0 defeat at the Stade Louis II on Tuesday night that has left them sitting in the final automatic qualification spot ahead of the visit of Celtic in the final round of fixtures on matchday eight next Wednesday. Four-time Europa League winner Emery was left baffled by his team's 'horrible' set pieces and even implied that some players on the pitch did not carry out his instructions.
Speaking to the media after the game, he said : "What is the reason? I could be here two days explaining it, in one minute it’s difficult. My point of view has two directions. One is to analyse each match, today how we played, I think we played 70 minutes like I want.
"If we want to be at this level, we have to try and score those chances we had. Even after that I was more or less positive. In the second half we started the same. We were horrible in set-pieces, we were horrible. We had seven corners and not one close to scoring. When we are playing games like today, it’s important to get three points because I think we lost the opportunity to get in the top eight. Today was the key."
Villa host West Ham on Sunday before the Celts travel to Birmingham next week. The Midlands side will require victory against the Hoops and help from elsewhere to hold ono their top eight spot and defender Tyrone Mings insists the team will quickly get the Monaco defeat out of their system ahead of two huge games in the next eight days.
Speaking to TNT Sports, he said: "It isn't pressure as that's something we deal with every team we step onto the football pitch, so that's no different. We enjoy it and it's obviously a very big game next week but they all are. We will look forward to it but we have got a big game at the weekend and that is our main focus.
"We won't think too much about this game before the weekend but we will comprehensively debrief it before the next Champions League game because now our focus is completely different."
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