Unai Emery lamented his players’ loss of control after John McGinn was sent off in a sorry 4-0 home defeat against Tottenham that dented Aston Villa’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League.
McGinn was given a straight red card for a wild challenge on Destiny Udogie on 65 minutes, at which point Villa trailed to two second-half goals inside three minutes from James Maddison and Brennan Johnson.
Son Heung-min and Timo Werner struck in stoppage time to cut fourth-placed Villa’s advantage over fifth-placed Spurs to two points. Tottenham, crucially, have a game in hand on Villa. Emery was disappointed by the result and red card but insisted McGinn had no “bad intentions”.
The Villa manager said: “We have to try and control our emotions when we are under pressure and when we are in some moments struggling. The maturity of the players here is getting better. We have to control our emotions, even when we are losing 2-0. We have a responsibility to be mature.
“But today is one drop – one drop – in our control of our emotions. We lost so, so easily in the second half, conceding two goals and [we lost] our moment to take the game on calmly, by playing and trying to come back to get a result. The red card changed the match completely.”
Ange Postecoglou expressed his delight at his side’s display but said there is still room for improvement in the final third. “That is still the area of the park where I don’t think we’ve got bang for our buck, considering how hard we work in that front third,” the Spurs manager said.
“I was really pleased with the execution of all of our goals and the players who got them is important for us. We can be a team that scores a lot of goals but we’re still a work in progress in that area.”
