Matty Cash has praised the 'mentality sample' Marco Asensio after Aston Villa has taken a gigantic step in the direction of the quarterfinals of the Champions League.
The International Van Poland greeted the On-Loan Pelenmaker from Real Madrid for the performance to take the last-minute penalty that the men of Unai Emery gave a 3-1 advantage on their way to the second stage of next week.
Villa has a checkered recent history from 12 meters. Ollie Watkins skied one against Celtic and Youri Tielemans has also missed. The Belgian international handed the ball to the Spanish international and Watkins stepped aside after Christos Tzolis had increased cash.
The right back said: “His experience is clearly the key. He stepped over the penalty, I knew where it went.
“He shows leadership and that quality day in day out. He also clearly played for the largest club in the world and other clubs. He has a lot of quality and his way of thinking and his mentality is great. “
Cash was one of the few players who returned to Emery's team after a bumping muscle injury. Pau Torres and Boubacar Kamara also arrived again and the boss of Villa now has options from the bank after a series of six games in 18 days.
Cash said: “I think we actually have an almost complete team except Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley. We have a very good team, a good team, we have a great moral and we clearly have players in every position that can make a difference.
“You need different players in different games. Tonight we made four changes, which is clearly fun for the manager. “
The Villa campaign builds up a head of steam. It looks more likely than not that the top five of the Premier League is eligible for next season's Champions League. Although they are in tenth place, the Birmingham club is four points behind Chelsea in the fifth, and there is only one hole of six points to the third Nottingham-Bos placed.
Villa's defender added: “I think we can all say that we have not really been completely to our best this season, really as a group. But you look at it, we are in the quarterfinals of the FA Cup, and then of course we will have a huge game next week, and one of the most important things is that we want to become consistent in the competition and want to go back to the top five.
“But it is clearly nice to be in the top competitions, and if you are still in them in March, it is clearly a good sign, so we can continue fingers crossed. As players – and as a group – we want to do our best. We want to dream of playing in the big games and competing.
“But it is a cliché – you have to take every game as it comes, because when you enter the later phases, the quality of the teams you are against is a high quality, so you can only do as well as possible as you can. We want to dream, we want to try to compete in every competition that we can and hopefully we can. “
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