Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins has hailed club manager Unai Emery as a tactical genius. This comes following the forward’s match-winning brace against Chelsea, and fans have been reacting.
According to him, Aston Villa’s shift in tactics paved the way for their comeback win, and Emery deserves praise for switching things up to overpower Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Watkins added that extending Villa’s winning run in all competitions to 11 was a great feeling.
His words, “Yeah, amazing win, obviously for me personally to come on and score two goals is a great feeling, but to keep up this run, and to come away here at Chelsea, a tough place and win, amazing is the word to sum it up really.
He [Emery] changed it, because Chelsea were going man for man but they had the extra centre-back when we were going long. So when I came on second-half he brought Sancho on the wing and Morgan [Rogers] and I think it gave us a little more space and then put Youri [Tielemans] in the No. 10 so we had an extra body up there. Tactical genius I would say.”
Emery added, “We kept the same game plan we had at the first half, but the first half they were playing fantastic. They were dominating. We couldn’t get the ball easily. We were defending low, we are defending well. We didn’t concede corners, only one corner and they score. But we needed to be passionate and try to keep being resilient and we were speaking after the first half in the dressing room. Normally we could improve like we did because they were pushing a lot in the first half and in the second half we knew we could have our momentum, as well to control the game better than the first half. We were getting better but we needed to change some fresh legs and as well different players. And of course every play in the second half after when they win the match their impact was very fantastic and necessary.
Watkins was so, so focused. Keeping the game plan like we planned and doing his tasks, he’s normally getting his numbers and today scoring goals is fantastic.”
WOW.
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