Unai Emery waits to play his hand as Villarreal plot ‘perfect game’ against Liverpool

Unai Emery summed it up fairly well in his post-match press conference last week. “We wanted to win, we weren’t able to. We wanted to draw, we weren’t able to. We wanted to keep the score down to one, we weren’t able to. We wanted to score and couldn’t.” In other words, things have not exactly gone to plan for Villarreal in this Champions League semi-final tie so far. “But at home,” he added, “let’s see what we can do.”

There were parts of the first leg at Anfield that resembled one of Liverpool’s more straightforward Premier League engagements this season. Pick whatever statistic you want - shots, possession, expected goals - and they were clearly the superior of the two sides. Villarreal pressed ever so slightly more, closing down 141 times compared to Liverpool’s 139, but when you consider that they spent three-quarters of the game without the ball, that tells its own story. This was a good old-fashioned bus parking.

Villarreal’s approach was reactive in the extreme, defined entirely by the damage that Liverpool could do to them rather than what damage they might do to Liverpool. That apparent lack of ambition has been criticised by some in the days since, and in one case, so vociferously that the club themselves felt compelled to respond. A video of their supporters in the Anfield Road end applauding the players at full time was shared across Villarreal’s social media channels and captioned with: “Try telling these fans yesterday was a disgrace”.

The criticism of their approach misses the mark. Villarreal could not win the tie at Anfield but they could certainly lose it. Very few coaches would have done differently in Emery’s position given the difference in talent and resources. Up against a vastly superior