Unai Emery explains how vital Aston Villa win over Chelsea could be

Loan stars Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio twice combined in the second half as Emery’s men came from behind to win and snap a five-match winless run in the league.

Victory moved Villa up to seventh, within a point of Chelsea and the top five and Emery acknowledged the result may have been a vital one for their season.

“The points we lost along the way we are not going to recover but there is still an opportunity to compete for European positions at the end of the season,” he said.

“Today winning and losing was completely different. Why? Because Chelsea would have got a big gap on us and secondly maybe our confidence was going down.

“Today the supporters, the players, maybe even the coaches and myself, wow, we are a little bit excited as well with the possibility through the Premier League to be close to the European positions.”

Asensio scored twice, both goals set-up by Rashford who came off the bench at half-time with Villa trailing 1-0 to Enzo Fernandez’s ninth-minute opener. Villa’s winner came in the 89th minute when Asensio’s volley slipped through the hands of goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen.

Emery was impressed with the mentality of his players after admitting their first half performance had been some way below par.

“Marco Asensio and Marcus Rashford did one step forward in their adaptation for us, playing in our structure better and better, (Donyell) Malen as well.

“Of course, we have to keep going in the Premier League.

“The idea when we were signing different players was to help us, to show their capacity and commitment to work here.

“Today was very good how we watched second half the performance of Marcus and Marco. Today they did fantastic.”