Villarreal narrowly defeated Lech Poznan 4-3 in a seven-goal thriller that saw Francis Coquelin score the winner in the 89th minute.
In his post match interview that appeared on Marca, Unai Emery discussed the value of winning in Europe:
“Winning in Europe is very difficult. They are a team who play good football, who took the lead with a mistake from us. The moment we dropped our level of concentration and intensity, they equalised. The 4-3 scoreline was fair. I’ve experienced games like this before, where you start as favourites on paper but then it’s difficult on the pitch. The objective is to be first. Winning is important, and we have won.”
The Villarreal coach defended the changes he made to the team from their victory against Elche last weekend:
Filip Jörgensen and Adrián de la Fuente have done pre-season with us, they are good enough to be in the first team. I think the issues were more with our game management than the changes I made. Any of the players who played could be a starter.”
Emery believes that there is room for improvement:
“Today we didn’t have the defensive responses that are so strong in the league. In attack I liked our positioning and we found some positions, but we didn’t have continuity. We have to adjust the pressure on our opponents. We lack effective execution.”
GSFN
