Villa win in Brugge, and Emery loses patience with his own substitutes

This time Aaron Wan-Bissaka conceded a penalty that Nicolò Tresoldi converted in the 61st minute, cutting the margin to one and turning a comfortable position into an uncomfortable half hour.

The substitutes problem

Emery's irritation midway through the second half was not about the penalty. It was about players who were not ready to come on.

This has now happened three times in a short period. At Hull the previous weekend it was Tammy Abraham and Wan-Bissaka; days before that, against Arsenal, it was Alejandro Garnacho. In Brugge the players concerned were Alysson, Ross Barkley and Lamare Bogarde.

"In the dressing room at half-time we were speaking about some players who were tired, Kamara, Wan-Bissaka," Emery said, referring to Boubacar Kamara.

He described the sequence that followed. "I tried to keep them on for 15 minutes," he said, but when he asked for the replacements they were "talking through the set pieces, sorting individual issues" — when what he needed was their impact on the field. They delivered it, he said, once they were on.

The final clause matters. Emery's complaint was about readiness, not about the players themselves — once on, he says, they delivered.

What he took from the night

The manager framed the result around resilience, which is what managers do when the performance was uneven and the points were collected anyway.

"Today was a very important step forward, being resilient when we were struggling," he said. "It is very important to start with three points."

He added that he hoped it would carry into the Premier League, where Villa face Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

For a side that had taken one point from its opening league fixtures, an away win in Europe is a useful thing to be carrying into that.