Unai Emery vows to keep taking the Aston Villa fight to Premier League rivals

The boss admitted to being disappointed and even angry with the result after the Reds ran out 3-1 winners at Villa Park.

But the Spaniard also praised the spirit of his team, who carved out a number of good chances against Jurgen Klopp’s men.

Villa remain 12th in the Premier League table heading into 2023 and Emery said: “I want to be optimistic.

“Today I am disappointed, angry but I think the attitude of our team was amazing. There are some individual and collective tactical issues as well but we have to add and learn more things to take the steps I want to take.”

Ollie Watkins had already missed a good chance to put Villa ahead before Mo Salah broke the deadlock for the visitors inside the opening five minutes.

Virgil van Dijk then doubled the advantage before Watkins, who had earlier seen a goal chalked off for a marginal offside decision, finally got on the scoresheet just before the hour mark.

Villa were dominating the match at that point but could not find a leveller and Darwin Nunez had already missed a good chance for the Reds before 18-year-old Stefan Bajcetic netted his first senior goal to effectively end the contest nine minutes from time.

Emery, who did not make his first changes until the 86th minute, said: “I’m really disappointed. We did a great effort and the result was so hard for us.

“In the first half we started well, we created chances, we didn’t score and to concede two goals in set-pieces is not normal because we are working well in set-pieces.

“The result was a little bit tough for us in the first half. In the second half needed to keep a bit our gameplan and to try and get chances to score.

“We played for 30 minutes very well and scored. We created chances and were better than them.

“The transition from them was amazing. They have fast players like Salah and Darwin Nunez.

“They created two or three chances and the keeper saved one or two but then they scored and it ended the match.

“The last 15 minutes of the first half after they made it 2-0 we didn’t react as I wanted. At half-time we talked about it and in the second half we were better.”