Unai Emery was pleased with how Aston Villa handled their Europa Conference League tie against Hibernian on Wednesday night.
An Ollie Watkins hat-trick and goals from Leon Bailey and Douglas Luiz saw the Villans to a 5-0 win at Easter Road.
It means Emery and his team will take a commanding lead into next week’s second leg as they look to confirm a place in the group stages of the competition.
“I’m very happy. It’s our debut in Europe again, in the Conference League, and we’re very excited,” he said.
“One thousand supporters of Aston Villa were here with us enjoying this moment. We prepared the match being very, very serious, being disciplined and trying to do our game plan being strong defensively and offensively.
“At the end, the result was very good. I don’t know exactly if we deserved to win 5-0, but we deserved to win.
“We played, firstly, respecting them and, secondly, respecting this competition because we want to be in the group stage.
“We want to finish the second leg at home with our supporters, trying to be with our stadium full and starting a new way here in Europe.”
Villa were in control from start to finish against the Scottish Premier League side, executing their game plan and maintaining their intensity throughout the contest.
Emery says it’s now important that his team continue to build on their identity as they tackle multiple competitions this season.
He said: “We were speaking after the first half to keep being consistent try to do our game plan for 90 minutes with players coming on and trying to keep the impact that we had in the first half, and we did it.
“We have to create and build a string structure for the Premier League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup and here in the Conference League.
“We have some players injured but we are going to recover them and have everyone in our squad knowing our idea, how we can create, like with Nicolo Zaniolo as well.
“We can improve and we have to be demanding.”
