Unai Emery explains what was ‘not normal’ in Everton win vs Aston Villa amid Lucas Digne claim

Unai Emery felt the amount of mistakes Aston Villa made in their Carabao Cup loss to Everton was ‘not normal’ for his side.

The Toffees marched into the fourth round of the competition with a 2-1 win against their Premier League rivals at Villa Park last night. James Garner opened the scoring for the visitors in the 15th minute before Dominic Calvert-Lewin doubled the advantage on 50 minutes.

Villa thrashed Everton 4-0 when they met in the Premier League last month yet the tables well and truly turned in their latest encounter. Emery’s troops only came alive in the closing stages, with Boubacar Kamara bagging a consolation via a deflected effort.

Having picked up 12 points in their opening six top-flight games this term, Emery was disappointed by the drop in standards of Villa. Via the club’s website, he said: “We feel disappointed with the result. Some of the mistakes we made tonight were not normal, but we have to try to add some players into the team and try to get balance with them in every competition we are going to face.

“We started at the beginning controlling the game – not being very efficient at getting into their box but controlling with ball possession. The injury to Leon Bailey and their goal was when we were a little bit nervous. In the first half, we tried to change something to get responsibility for some players.”

Villa made five changes to the team that defeated Chelsea 1-0 at Stamford Bridge last weekend. Interestinly, John McGinn was deployed as a makeshift left-back with former Everton defender Lucas Digne coming off the bench for the second half. On his decision to do so, Emery said via Birmingham Live: "We needed to give Lucas Digne some rest. We did it as well because Alex Moreno was not ready to play, hopefully he is close to coming back but not yet. We had to use different players and John McGinn played well there and did good work there."