By The Telegraph (World News) | Created at 2024-09-29 11:55:34 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:29:08
17 hours ago
And we welcome you, thanks for joining us for our live blog of the first Premier League game of the afternoon. Kieran McKenna’s newly promoted side have yet to win a match in the division this season and hope that they can get the ball rolling against Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, who have been going nicely with four wins out of five, only a defeat against Arsenal blotting their copybook.
Unai knows that fans, perhaps, will have one eye on the midweek glamour tie with Brian Munchen, no less, but he’s made it clear that he won’t tolerate anyone going through the motions in Suffolk.
The Germans come to Villa Park on Wednesday night for a repeat of the 1982 European Cup final, which Villa famously won.
But Emery’s side wants all eyes on Portman Road.
“We are thinking only about the next match, which is Ipswich,” he said at his pre-match press conference. “I can repeat from the beginning of the season in the pre-season how important every match is that we’re playing.
“The last two years, we got Conference League with a one-point difference with Brentford and last year we got Champions League with a two-point difference to Tottenham.
“One point, two points, three points - we are playing for something in every match we are facing. At the end of the season, we don’t want to remind ourselves of some moments when we weren’t focused on those points.
“We are thinking only about Ipswich and respecting them a lot. We are not thinking about the next match or the next week.”
Emery thinks there is even more to come from his side this season despite an already impressive start.
Villa have won four of their five Premier League games so far as well as enjoying a debut win in the Champions League against Young Boys.
He added: “Some players are in the process and we want to increase our level individually and collectively through them. The process is positive because we are getting points in this way.
“We have to improve a lot of things, individually and collectively.
“The match we played against Wolverhampton was a very good match to analyse deeply how we were playing before in the Champions League as well emotionally.”
