Mixed feelings for Aston Villa boss after first-leg stalemate

The visitors barely mustered a chance in 90 minutes at the Johan Cruyff Arena and also saw Ezri Konsa sent-off late on in the first leg of the Europa Conference League last-16 tie.

But they will head into next week’s return leg as favourites to progress in front of their own supporters and Emery said: “I am happy because I knew the difficulty we were going to face. The players were a bit upset because they did not feel comfortable.

“But I said to compete is most important. When we are not in control of the game we have to compete and we did that.”

Emery made five changes to his starting XI and handed Morgan Rogers a full Villa debut, while Tim Iroegbunam was handed a first start of the season.

But the Spaniard insisted his selection had not been influenced by Sunday’s Premier League clash with Tottenham.

He said: “I wasn’t really thinking about Sunday because we decided the starting XI with players like Tim and Morgan because we didn’t have a player like Tim after the injury to Boubacar Kamara.

“Ajax have a lot of young players and with Tim we have to do the same and play around players with experience.

“More or less I was trying to be positive with those players but really we didn’t control the game like we wanted.”

Emery, meanwhile, revealed Pau Torres’ half-time removal had been a precaution, after the defender had made his first start since last month’s win over Nottingham Forest. John McGinn had also been complaining of pain in the build-up, so was not risked from the start.

He continued: “The result is open for next week. Now we are going to try and do something very different, respecting them. At home in Villa Park we will need our supporters and our moment, to try and play and be more successful in our idea.

“We will try to impose more or gameplan and feel more at home with our supporters. Today we did not show our play collectively or individually.”