Unai Emery was delighted with Aston Villa’s achievement after the club reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League with a 6-1 aggregate success against Club Brugge.
Beginning the night with a 3-1 lead after a first leg triumph in Bruges, the home side also held a numerical advantage for most of the contest after Kyriani Sabbe’s 16th-minute red card.
And Villa made the extra man count during a devastating 11-minute spell early in the second half, scoring three times to earn a 6-1 aggregate victory.
“I’m very proud of our supporters, our work, the players, the club, the workers because we’re increasing our demand,” he said.
“In increasing our demand we have to get the objective we are facing in the high level we have to get. This season, playing in the Champions League was a very good opportunity when we started and we’re really focusing a lot in the Champions League about how we can be a protagonist.
“Today we competed against one team and performed very well. I’m very happy with how we are in the way and we’re going to play a quarter-final against PSG.
“This is two matches more for our supporters to be with us, to share with us their emotions and we’re going to try to prepare as best as possible to continue like we are doing.”
Emery’s half-time changes acted as the catalyst for a dominant second half showing as Leon Bailey and Marco Asensio created the first goal to break the deadlock.
Ian Maatsen quickly made it 2-0 before Asensio bagged the third brace of his loan spell to confirm a quarter-final tie with parent club Paris Saint-Germain.
Emery said: “The first half was a little bit – not a surprise because every team in the Champions League can perform like they did.
“We couldn’t stop them, we couldn’t recover the ball and we couldn’t dominate with the ball in the first half. We provoked the red card because this action we did is one option we have with a long ball in behind. Rashford did fantastic and the ball from Emiliano Martínez was fantastic.
“In the second half we changed completely and we were speaking at half-time about how we could change how the match was going. We did and the players took responsibility to get our plan strongly to dominate like we did in the second half.
“Through this domination we scored three goals. My objective, I told the players, is playing like we did in the second half when it’s 11v11 and try to achieve the same performance like we did.”
