Aston Villa are on a superb run of form.<\/p>\n
They have won 20 of their past 25 matches (D1, L4) with only Arsenal (21) having won more among teams in Europe’s big-five leagues during that period.<\/p>\n
Their blip on Sunday against Everton meant they missed out on the chance to move second, within four points of Premier League leaders Arsenal – Emery’s old club.<\/p>\n
He made six changes against Fenerbahce and his side dominated, with the 1-0 scoreline flattering the 28-time Turkish champions.<\/p>\n
After the match Emery praised his players for “respecting” the competition, adding he was “so, so happy” with their response.<\/p>\n
Villa’s match-winner Jadon Sancho scored his first goal for the club on his 19th appearance since joining on loan from Manchester United in September.<\/p>\n
“It’s nice to have a manager that backs you and obviously believes in you,” said the 25-year-old forward who has not played for United since August 2024, and whose contract with them expires this summer.<\/p>\n
“He [Emery] just keeps on telling me to be positive every time I play. Every opportunity I get I’m going to try and do 100% and hopefully I can deliver goals.”<\/p>\n
Sancho has only started two Premier League games this season, but in the Europa League he has been in Villa’s starting line-up for each of their past five matches.<\/p>\n
Villa have played 12 times since the start of December, and by guaranteeing a top-eight league-phase finish avoided a two-legged play-off in February.<\/p>\n
Emery still played striker Ollie Watkins for the full 90 minutes on Thursday, and star midfielder Morgan Rogers for 74 minutes.<\/p>\n
He was also able to give Tyrone Mings his first start since November, after the defender recovered from a thigh injury.<\/p>\n
Amadou Onana, who has been out with a hamstring issue, was also given a late cameo off the bench and is another key player returning.<\/p>\n
“[We are] building the team with some circumstances not helping us,” Emery told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
“But next week we can finish the transfer window and hopefully we can get everything we need to complete the squad for the next months and the competitions we have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa are on a superb run of form. They have won 20 of their past 25 matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-259007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}