Aston Villa Manager Emery Calls Mings’ Penalty “Biggest Mistake” of His Career

Aston Villa manager Unai Emery commented on the unusual penalty incident involving player Tyrone Mings, which resulted in Club Brugge scoring the decisive goal on Wednesday. He stated, “His mistake is completely strange. It’s the biggest mistake I witnessed in my career.” Emery added, “We can make a mistake in the build-up, we work to try to control the games through keeping possession and trying to stop the possession and we did that in the first half fantastic.” He continued, “We lost one or two balls, but we were always in the position to recover, but this mistake is very, very strange.” The manager further remarked, “It’s only happened one time in all my life.” When questioned about whether a lack of intensity contributed to Villa’s defeat, Emery responded: “I don’t know if it was intensity. It was a mistake. The first half we played like we were planning. We had two chances, we had some corners and didn’t concede a corner from them.” He elaborated, “We didn’t let them play in transition, we didn’t make mistakes. The second half after the goal… it’s Europe.” Emery stated, “I have played in Europe for 16 years in a row. This situation I had before, not a mistake like that, but I had before. I know the difficulties we are going to face.” He concluded, “You watched the match and them playing, they finished exhausted. It was not intensity, the match changed completely after our mistake.”