Aston Villa manager Unai Emery has said he is ‘so happy’ after Aston Villa survived a late wobble to beat Sunderland 4-3 at Villa Park.
An engrossing game saw Sunderland recover from two goals down to equalise late on, only for Tammy Abraham to score a stoppage-time winner for Villa.
In a frantic start, the two teams exchanged goals inside nine minutes through Ollie Watkins and Chris Rigg, before Watkins restored Villa’s lead before half-time.
Morgan Rogers made it three for The Villans within seconds of the restart, but Sunderland staged an improbable comeback. Trai Hume and Wilson Isidor looked to have earned the visitors a point, before Abraham settled a seven-goal thriller in time added on.
“I am so, so happy. We played a fantastic match and maybe the two goals we conceded in one minute, we lost our mind a little bit. They were excited. But how we reacted at 3-3 to score the fourth goal was fantastic,” Emery said to Sky Sports.
“The Premier League is very difficult and to beat Sunderland, they had the opportunity today and still are in the run for Europe. We started this match with many objectives, one of them was to keep fourth, get an advantage on other teams and leave Sunderland further behind us. We did it. I am do happy with how we played. I am going to analyse deeply why we lost our minds in a few minutes.
“First half, we started intense and dominated. Of course we conceded very quickly but we recovered our positioning and we played our game plan. The second half was better, we had chances to score the fourth. Very positive today. I am analysing how we are building tactically and how we want to play.”
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