Unai Emery impressed with Aston Villa’s desire in victory over Basel | OneFootball

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery was impressed with the way his side fought to earn a crucial 2-1 win at Basel in the Europa League.

Evann Guessand netted his second goal of the European campaign to put Villa in front but the hosts fought back and saw Leo Leroy’s effort ruled out for offside before Flavius Daniliuc got them on level terms a few moments later.

Youri Tielemans came on for Matty Cash at the start of the second half and fired Villa in front once against eight minutes later which was enough to earn Emery’s side their eighth straight win in all competitions.

Victory for Villa ensured them of a play-off spot and they are three points clear in the automatic qualification places with two games to go.

Emery knew the match was not going to be easy against a side that had won seven Europa League games at home on the bounce.

He told TNT Sport: “We knew before the match the difficulties we were facing. After we did the last match, a lot of words after our victory against Arsenal it is not easy to recover, the structure in our mentality to keep the same hard work we did.

“We struggled today and the last 10 minutes they were close to draw but I am happy how we played more or less 90 minutes and how we got this victory.

“I know it’s difficult to beat them here because the last seven matches they were winning.

“Our idea when we started the season was try to manage every player, giving them chances to play, help us, use them feeling comfortable in our structure and how we are managing it. I like how they are responding and how we are building the players in our structure.

“Today the last 15 minutes they were pushing a lot and fighting in the duels and we needed our players fighting like they did.”

Tielemans had a disruptive start to the season with a calf injury but was able to come off the bench and open his account for the season following a string of high quality performances on his return.

The 28-year-old admits the performance was not the best but three points was the most important thing.

He said: “The pitch was not the best and you could see in our game it wasn’t as fluent as we could have been. We could have done better in certain phases but to go home with a win is really good.

“The space was there for me to shoot at the first post so I tried to place it and keep it as low as possible. The first goal they conceded it was on that side so I thought if I hit it that side it would help because he had an injury I saw.

“Where we are now is very good. We have two more games to go, away at Fenerbahce and home to Salzburg. It’s going to be difficult but we want to win both and see were we are at.”