Unai Emery spoke to media at Bodymoor Heath on Friday afternoon as he looked ahead to Sunday’s Premier League encounter against Fulham.
Aston Villa’s head coach discussed Thursday night’s Europa Conference League victory over AZ Alkmaar, responding to last weekend’s defeat at Nottingham Forest, our home form at Villa Park, what he expects from the Cottagers and provided an update on the latest team news.
Here’s what he had to say…
On bouncing back from Forest and analysis meetings…
“I am always trying to be consistent with my plan and trying to be better today than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today.
“These messages are always in my mind and I’m repeating them to the players.
“And then we try to practice and analyse deeply each match and, of course, we have to try to be consistent about why we are not being consistent away, why we are not winning or close to winning the match we played in Nottingham.
“Firstly, analyse this because we have to respect the opponent and we have to try and stop the gameplan the opponent is trying to impose.
“And we have to accept we can’t win every match and we can lose some matches, but we have to try to win more matches than we lose. And move on.
“We were analysing the match against AZ Alkmaar at the beginning and we finished this morning speaking about it. We’re going to add the two matches against Legia Warszawa and Zrinjski.
“But now is Fulham and I’m going to analyse Fulham with the players, but my analysis is always two deductions.
“Firstly, try to analyse ourselves and how we can face the match on Sunday. Secondly, try to analyse the opponent and how we can adapt to them and try to impose our idea with their gameplan.”
On Fulham…
“I respect Fulham a lot. The history of Fulham, the players of Fulham and the coach, who is a very good coach, experienced coach.
“They’re a very organised team, competitive team, they’re playing well.
“They lost against Manchester United at home in their last match but they deserved more. They drew against Arsenal one month ago at the Emirates and everything they were doing, everything we’re analysing of them, really is to be admired and to respect them a lot.
“On Sunday, I know it’s going to be a very difficult match and the players always have to be confident, have to practice trying to feel confident like we are playing.
“And very focused and very demanding in 90 minutes.
“We have to use the starting XI players and we have to take some players on the bench and be really demanding when we need to impact with them.”
On team news…
“Diego Carlos, I don’t know exactly, he’s not going to be available for Sunday. Maybe it’s a small injury, maybe, but it’ll be difficult to be available for Sunday.
“Jacob Ramsey is progressing very well, he’s close to being with us in training sessions every day. But not yet.
“And Álex Moreno is progressing very good, he’s available to be in the squad and he’s available to be ready to play Sunday.
“Other players, they are available and ready to play.”
