Unai Emery saw his Aston Villa side holding their hope for securing a berth of the Champions League, but did not get a favor from Manchester United
Aston Villa -Baas Unai Emery joked that he expected Manchester United to be defeated by Chelsea on Friday evening. Marc Cucurella scored the decisive goal for the blues in the second half, on his way to Andre Onana and handed United their 18th Premier League loss of the season.
United thought they had taken the lead when Harry Maguire found the back of the net of a Bruno Fernandes cross, but VAR excluded it offside. The match ended 1-0 at Stamford Bridge, in which Chelsea from Enzo Maresca took an important step towards securing Champions League qualification for next season.
Villa is one of the teams in the race to secure a top five finish, which means they return to the top competition of Europe. And if Amorim's side had received a result in West -London, Villa's destination would have been in his own hands.
Emery hinted that, however, he had not stopped too much hope, but Villa now needed results to take advantage of the last day.
“How's Chelsea?” He asked. “Ended 1-0, okay, we expected it,” he said, followed by a brutal grin and a smile.
Emery added: “It's not in our hands. We win. But other teams are, they are demanding and they get their points.”
As far as United is concerned, they can still earn a place in the Champions League in one way or another, even though they are their worst domestic finish in more than 50 years. Against Chelsea, she leaves them in 16th place in the table, but winning the Europa League -final US Spurs would return them to the European elite.
Amorim is not sure if that would be beneficial for the success of United's long -term, with a huge overhaul of the play staff needed to compete.
Asked if the qualification of the Champions League could hinder its project, he said: “That is my feeling. We need more time with the team. We have to arrange many things in Carrington that we need more time to do, so we don't think of Game by Game by Game.
“Then we have the team. We have proven this year that we should be a better team if we want to win European competitions and then really want to be competitive in the Premier League. That will be difficult. My feeling is that.”