Unai Emery drops Villarreal tactics hint for Liverpool Champions League second leg

Unai Emery has pledged that Villarreal will do ‘something different’ as they look to pull off a huge upset and knock Liverpool out of the Champions League.

The Reds eased to a straightforward 2-0 victory in the Champions League semi-final first leg at Anfield last night.

An own goal from Pervis Estupinan and a Sadio Mane effort in the second half means that Jurgen Klopp’s side have one foot in the door of a third European Cup final in five years.

Villarreal boss Emery couldn’t complain the visitors were well beaten by Liverpool.

But he has insisted that when the Reds travel to Estadio de la Cerámica next week for the return leg, it will be a much more difficult test - and hinted at a change of tactics.

Emery said: “We can’t say anything about their victory because they deserve it.

“The first half for us was really good but we didn’t achieve some things in attack to do good counter-attacks and good transitions.

“They had two or three chances to score but we defended the box and the goal better than we did in the second half.

“But the second half was the same, they pushed and they deserved to score. 2-0 is a good result for them.

“For us, it’s not really a good result, but we are going to try to dream to do something different at home with our supporters.

“The match next week will be very, very different than tonight.

“Obviously it’s very difficult. After they made it 2-0, you can go to try to score one goal.

“We tried but when they have space to do transitions and with the players like they have, it’s more important to try to do that next week at home.

“We’ll change something maybe tactically, but I think they are going to suffer more than tonight in the next leg.”