Unai Emery bizarrely insisted that Aston Villa are “not top five contenders” after a 1-0 loss against Everton.
Villa could have climbed above Manchester City and cut the gap on leaders Arsenal to four points with victory but their 11-game winning streak at Villa Park ended thanks to Thierno Barry’s second-half goal.
A frustrating afternoon highlighted how Villa are perhaps not serious title challengers, given the fragile state of their squad and they will need some reinforcements in the coming weeks if they want to remain in the hunt.
And that led to Emery reminding people of his reality.
“We are not contender to be in the top five. We are still not being contenders,” Emery told Sky Sports.
“There are other teams with more potential than us.”
The interview raised the eyebrows of Jamie Redknapp and former Villa and Everton player Ashley Young, who branded the interview “weird”.
“It was certainly one of the oddest interviews I have ever seen,” Redknapp said. “The bit at the end, when he goes quiet. It was a very sensible question.
“I don’t know what he is trying to allude to. I guess he is just genuinely devastated with that performance and result. They do need players.
Emery later added: “We are doing a fantastic season. When we played at Everton (in September), we drew and we were worse than now.
“Of course today we lost a very good opportunity and we are in front of other teams who are competing to be in the position we are. We lost the opportunity to be second in the league, something fantastic.
“But after feeling our frustration at losing this match, we must try and recover our good, positive way we are doing. Football is to win, to lose, or to draw. when you are losing you are sad, like we are now, when you are winning you are happy and mostly we have had more time happy than sad.
“We are frustrated, disappointed, but everything we did before is for something and we lost the opportunity to be second in the league. But our target in the Premier League is to try to get our best in 38 matches and until the day 34, I’m not going to speak about where we can finish.”
Everton became the first team to win at Villa Park since August and they are just four points behind city rivals Liverpool – who currently occupy fourth position – and are also in contention for European contention.
On his side’s display, David Moyes said: “It’s a brilliant performance, with what we had coming here, it looked a big challenge with the players we had out.
“It was a huge day for two or three players who stepped up.”
Additional reporting from PA
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