But again, it’s not just what we did, it’s always how we do it. The intensity, the desire, the awareness, because it’s pretty clear what they want to do – and if you are a little bit late, they punish you.
They have their traps, and when you are late, they create space in their pockets. And then they have such great runners in behind, intelligent players moving in the pocket.
And then with Ollie Watkins, with Morgan Rogers, a lot of pace and runs. With John McGinn, or last time Youri Tielemans played on the 10… I don’t know if [Evann] Guessand will start for them…
Many players, they want to get them in possession in front of your defence, in front of your back line, and then really threaten with making their runs. So therefore, we know, and every team knows how they want to play, but it’s not so easy to deal with it.
On the other side, we did very well [last season] and this gives us confidence. If you have this proven a few times, and also at Villa Park, and not just at home – so there it was a 2-2 and a 2-1 last year – it shows, in every single game against them we scored goals. And this gives us confidence that we are able to do it.
If you had lost five games and never scored a goal, and all of a sudden then you ask, ‘if we do the same, why should we score two or three this time?’ But if you always have scored at least two, this gives you confidence – but that doesn’t mean that this happens again.
But preparation for me won’t be that difficult because Unai will play his style and he’s doing so well there, and I have a really big admiration of how he’s playing with his teams.