Aston Villa: How ‘demanding’ Emery turned season around

Emery’s biggest strength appears to be in finding solutions to problems.

They did not a score a single goal in the first four games of the season – prompting some to speculate whether Emery had actually taken Villa as far as he could – but in the 16 games since they have failed to score just once.

More recently it has been suggested they are too reliant on goals scored from outside the box but against Brighton all four of their strikes were from inside 18 yards.

In training this week, Emery told Amadou Onana that he didn’t score enough goals with his head. What was Aston Villa’s third goal against Brighton? A header from Onana.

“Yesterday in training the manager was giving me a little bit of stick,” the midfielder told Sky Sports.

“He thought I could score a lot more goals with my head so I kept telling them to put more on head and I’d score and that’s what I did tonight.”

Villa’s ability to change and adapt has contributed to them being the form team of the Premier League over the course of the last 10 games, winning eight and taking 25 points.

Wednesday’s win was also Emery’s 62nd in the Premier League as Villa manager – the most by any in the club’s history.

“How we started the game and reacted is more like the season,” Emery said.

]”The players reacted and continued with our game plan to never give up. We kept the mentality and the resilience and it was really fantastic.”

Former Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy believes key to Villa’s turnaround has been Emery’s ability to remain calm when under pressure.

“He is a great coach and consistently gets the best out of his players,” Murphy said on BBC Match of the Day.

“He didn’t panic at the start of the season. It has been just terrific coaching and management and the players are responding.”