John McGinn reveals why Aston Villa are ready to ‘make some history’ in Champions League | OneFootball

Aston Villa captain John McGinn says the best could be yet to come from his side this season as they look to create “history”.

Villa are challenging on three fronts as they are in the last 16 of the Champions League, the FA Cup quarter-finals and still in the race for a top-four finish in the Premier League.

Their attention turns to Europe this week where they play at Club Brugge in the first leg of the round of 16, hoping for revenge after November’s 1-0 defeat in Belgium in the league phase.

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Aston Villa’s John McGinn feels ‘something special’ could be on the horizon (Nick Potts/PA) (PA Wire)

While boss Unai Emery has been at pains to say his side are not favourites in each of the competitions they remain in, McGinn knows “something special” could be on the horizon.

“Of course, we’re in the competitions, we are contenders to win every competition we’re in,” the Scotland international said. “In certain competitions we are more fancied than others.

“But of course, being in the competition, we are contenders, and going towards the end of the season, it’s brilliant that we’ve got so much to look forward to.

“We’ve got an opportunity to make some history, but (there’s) a long, long way to go in each competition.

“And I think the exciting thing for us is we know we’ve not had top form yet. We’ve still got a lot more to give.

“There’s been a big inconsistency about us this season, so hopefully towards the end of the season we start to click more consistently, and we can do something special.

“We don’t listen too much to what a manager has to say in press conferences because we know we may say things that we regret. So as I said we are probably not favourites, but we are contenders.

“We’ve got a very difficult tie over two legs here, and our full focus is on that. Get a spot of revenge, obviously, tomorrow night hopefully.”

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(Nick Potts/PA Wire)

Villa suffered defeat in Bruges in November, going down to a second-half penalty after Tyrone Mings picked up the ball from Emiliano Martinez’s goal kick.

Emery has described Tuesday’s match as a “key moment” of the season and has called on his side to be more “responsible, mature and emotionally stronger” than their last visit.

He said: “When we played here, we didn’t compete like I want to do.

“And, of course, the players they know, and we analysed why we didn’t compete in that moment.

“Hopefully we can do more. We need to get the balance and to play, trying to manage our emotions well, because now, of course, it’s a key moment for the season, tomorrow and the second leg in this competition.

“And we have to try to play being responsible, being mature and emotionally stronger.”

Since that game in November, Villa have added three-time Champions League winner Marco Asensio and Marcus Rashford to their squad. And Emery expects them to help.

“We added players with experience in Europe, usually they are playing in the highest level and they will help us a lot, but we will see it,” Emery added.

“The process they are doing, progressively adapting to us is going well and getting better as well – how we want to try and use our structure, defensively, offensively.

“We are not going to get our objective through only individual players. We are going to get our objective collectively, building our structure as strong as possible.

“Then our individual players can display their skill. This is the challenge we have, it is my challenge, the players’ challenge and each one has the objective, hopefully we can share together, getting our objective in the next three months.”