Unai Emery sets sights on silverware as Aston Villa continue to ‘break barriers’

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has challenged his side to start winning trophies as they continue to “break barriers”.

Villa have been transformed in Emery’s two years in charge as he has taken them from a relegation battle to the Champions League.

They have also started this season superbly, enjoying their best opening to a Premier League campaign since 1998 and winning their opening two games in Europe, including a famous victory over Bayern Munich.

Emery, whose side are hoping to make it three wins from three in the Champions League at home to Bologna on Tuesday night, wants his players to maintain their current level and furnish it with silverware.

“I don’t want to waste my time here, that is my message. You can’t waste your time here,” the Spaniard said.

“My objective here is to keep the same level we have now, Champions League and add more to be contenders for titles.

“This is the message, we love football, we love our work and we want to be successful.

“We want to achieve the objectives and one of them is to play in the Champions League. It is not about playing there only because of some circumstances – I want to us to stay there for a long time.

“But it is difficult. Maybe sometimes you can have some problems or struggle in our way, but you have to be resilient. We want to be strong in the idea in our mind and create a strong mentality to always break barriers.

“We can believe, working like we are doing, we can keep it. This is my challenge, this is my objective now.

“We are fourth in the Premier League, we are with two wins in the Champions League.

“I want it and I want it to be always winning more matches than losing and trying to work hard to keep it for a long time.

“Tomorrow hopefully we will play showing we believe we can compete. I don’t know how far we are going to get but in this moment we are here, in a good position in the Premier League and Champions League.”

Defender Matty Cash is set for his Champions League bow after missing the first two matches through injury.

He is ready to live out a boyhood dream and says that there is no ceiling for Villa.

“In the last four years since I joined, the club has just gone through the roof, the quality in every single department has gone up and the club has not got a ceiling,” he said.

“I think it can go all the way to the top. You can see now playing Champions League football has been a building block to get here and the manager has been a big part of that to get us here.

“It is great to be here and in four years we have come a long way.”

Bologna are back in England after their defeat to Liverpool last time out.

Boss Vincenzo Italiano said: “We have to get some results, so we are still growing.

“We are facing teams that are doing great in their league, Villa won two games in the Champions League.

“We will have to sweat, perform and suffer. We will do that and then get whatever the growth will be from that.”