Aston Villa manager Unai Emery expressed satisfaction with Aston Villa’s performance following their impressive 2-1 win at Tottenham Hotspur in Saturday’s FA Cup third round clash.
In one of the ties of the third round, Villa held on for victory against a struggling Spurs side as they advanced to the fourth round of the competition.
Both sides traded chances in the early stages of the match, but Aston Villa went ahead in the 22nd minute through Emi Buendia, who fired past Vicario after nice interplay between Malen and John McGinn.
Kolo Muani had a goal ruled out for offside as Spurs threatened a comeback, before Aston Villa doubled their lead in first half stoppage time.
Emi Buendia turned provider when he played Morgan Rogers in on goal and the England international applied the finishing touch to put his side 2-0 ahead into the break.
“Of course, 90 minutes we played our structure and we expected a difficult match. It happened more or less as we planned. Stopping them, dominating with the ball and keeping possession, scoring two goals”, Emery said after the match.
“We expected after the first half that they need to push more, show character, we needed to be ready to be resilient. We conceded one goal and some chance; we needed Marco Bizot to save.
Tottenham came into the second half entirely in charge as they look to seal a memorable comeback.
They pulled one back through Odobert, before Villa went close to restoring their advantage, but Pedro Porro cleared off the line.
Xavi Simons then scored a likely equalizer, which was ruled out for offside once again as the match ended 2-1 in favour of the visitors.
“We recover again like the first half. After 90 minutes, with our momentum and their momentum, I think we deserve to get this win.”
Tottenham were booed off at full-time by their own supporters as they crash out of the competition, while Aston Villa progress to the next round.
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