Unai Emery calls for perspective as Aston Villa miss chance to go second

Unai Emery’s Aston Villa lost at home to Everton (Nick Potts/PA)

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery called for perspective after his side missed the chance to move back into second in the Premier League after a 1-0 loss against Everton.

Villa could have climbed above Manchester City and cut the gap on leaders Arsenal to four points with victory but their 11-game winning streak at Villa Park ended thanks to Thierno Barry’s second-half goal.

A frustrating afternoon highlighted how Villa are perhaps not serious title challengers, given the fragile state of their squad and they will need some reinforcements in the coming weeks if they want to remain in the hunt.

And that led to Emery reminding people of his reality.

Emery said: “We are doing a fantastic season. When we played at Everton (in September), we drew and we were worse than now.

“Of course today we lost a very good opportunity and we are in front of other teams who are competing to be in the position we are.

“We lost the opportunity to be second in the league, something fantastic.

“But after feeling our frustration at losing this match, we must try and recover our good, positive way we are doing.

“Football is to win, to lose, or to draw. when you are losing you are sad, like we are now, when you are winning you are happy and mostly we have had more time happy than sad.

“We are frustrated, disappointed, but everything we did before is for something and we lost the opportunity to be second in the league.

“But our target in the Premier League is to try to get our best in 38 matches and until the day 34, I’m not going to speak about where we can finish.”

Everton became the first team to win at Villa Park since August and they are just four points behind city rivals Liverpool – who currently occupy fourth position – and are also in contention for European contention.

David Moyes will be relieved his side were able to get the job done after they had a goal controversially ruled out in the first half after Harrison Armstrong was deemed to have been interfering from an offside position after Jake O’Brien had headed in.

“I couldn’t get a closer angle of it to see exactly, but I think he’s in an offside position,” he said. “But where he jumps, I don’t know if that’s enough to interfere. I’m sure it is nowadays.

“I don’t know if the ball was ever getting to Harrison. We’ve had quite a period of the moment where there’s very few decisions gone for us, whether it be getting people sent off, or hitting each other, or pulling hair or something else.

“So there’s an awful lot going against us recently. That was another one today.”

On his side’s display, he added: “It’s a brilliant performance, with what we had coming here, it looked a big challenge with the players we had out.

“It was a huge day for two or three players who stepped up.”