Unai Emery talked about how he has been managing his Aston Villa squad this season.
The Villans had an underwhelming summer window, relying on three deadline day signings to try to strengthen their squad. A sluggish start to the season followed, yet their form has been virtually immaculate since the return of Amadou Onana and Boubacar Kamara to full fitness.
Youri Tielemans is the icing on the cake of the midfield unit, but the success of the side is not just down to these three men. With the Europa League as an opportunity to rotate, the mastermind of continental football has found a balance to get the most out of his players in the last ten weeks.
“Of course, how we are managing the squad with the players and adding minutes with some players being normally in the bench is very important, because we must feel collectively, everything we need to perform collectively like we are doing.
“And how we are performing is not only because we have one starting 11 more or less being usually with the same players. We are changing, and we are trying to use different players, of course, in different competitions, but how they are responding makes me confident.
“They are giving me, positively, confidence to try to work like we are doing with every player we have. And if someone is out, not being available for different reasons, of course, we can trust another.
“Always, we are ready to work better and more to improve things. And we are, when I am speaking about our demands, our demand is, try to analyse each match deeply, and even winning, even playing and performing well collectively and individually, we can get better. And this is our demand.
“And of course, how we can be consistent is our priority, and our priority is to win on Sunday, knowing and respecting them and being humble. And how we perform, the last year is an example and it’s an experience for us. And sometimes we were performing well, we were achieving our objective.
“But maybe if we were getting our demands higher, maybe even we could get something more. And this is the reason now, this is the third year I am here, I am really very motivated, but as well, more demanding even than when I arrived here.
“So, my objective has a lot of things to improve, a lot of things to work, a lot of things to set as a target, being ambitious, and the first one is on Sunday, to beat Man United.”
