Villa boss Emery: We won by dominating Man City

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was delighted with his players after their 2-1 victory over champions Manchester City.

Jhon Duran and Morgan Rogers had Villa 2-0 ahead before Phil Foden struck for City in injury-time.

Emery said afterwards: “Always we are trying to be positive, in some matches we are maybe not performing as we want, but today we perform. We are feeling strong, here we played the first half very well, in the second half we kept possession more and getting in the box to score the second goal, we imposed and dominated more.”

On balancing game time for Ollie Watkins and Duran, he continued: “We are in the process with the players, keeping their consistency of playing. Jhon Duran today played fantastic, Watkins is fantastic as well, very important for us. Of course you have to work with both strikers, sometimes they play together. I am very happy with them.”

On Rogers, Emery added: “He played fantastic today, he is very important. Through him we are getting the performance back because he links strikers with midfielder and wingers. Today he was fantastic in the second half, connecting with strikers and scoring the goals. He has to add goals to his numbers, and today he was fantastic.”

On the attitude of his players, the manager concluded: “We played 90 minutes in the way we were expecting. They were imposing and dominant in the first half, more than we wanted. Then in the second half we dominated more, avoiding their press, I think we played better. The second half we were playing with confidence, we imposed and we decided to win through domination of them.”