Unai Emery promises to analyse why Aston Villa ‘lost our minds’ and almost lost 4-3 thriller

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery feels his side “lost our minds” and let Sunderland back into the 4-3 thriller that the Villans ended up winning, and has promised to work out why.

The Villans started the day fourth in the Premier League and have ended it there, but with one kick different, that might not have been the case. Villa , inspired by the quality of Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers, were bossing Sunderland , 3-1 up with five minutes of regular time to go.

Then, Chris Rigg scored what looked to be a consolation goal in the 86th minute, before the Black Cats cut Villa in half immediately after kick off, and Wilson Isidor levelled at 3-3.

Just a few minutes later, Sunderland should have gone 4-3 up, with Habib Diarra through one-on-one against Emi Martinez, when he tried a cute dink over the keeper, who got a strong hand up to stop it.

Villa then sprayed a cross to Tammy Abraham at the other end, who guided it towards goal to secure all three points for Villa, who could have ended the day on 55 points, but with 58, they’re again level with third-placed Manchester United.

After the match, Villa boss Emery suggested his side went crazy for the period Sunderland scored twice in.

He told Sky Sports : “I am so, so happy. We played a fantastic match and maybe the two goals we conceded in one minute, we lost our mind a little bit. They were excited. But how we reacted at 3-3 to score the fourth goal was fantastic.

“The Premier League is very difficult and to beat Sunderland , they had the opportunity today and still are in the run for Europe. We started this match with many objectives, one of them was to keep fourth, get an advantage on other teams and leave Sunderland further behind us. We did it. I am do happy with how we played. I am going to analyse deeply why we lost our minds in a few minutes.

“First half, we started intense and dominated. Of course we conceded very quickly but we recovered our positioning and we played our game plan. The second half was better, we had chances to score the fourth. Very positive today. I am analysing how we are building tactically and how we want to play.”

He also hailed match-winners Martinez and Abraham for their roles, stating: “We need strikers and goalkeepers. It was the match – three points for them and no three points for us.”