Aston Villa boss Unai Emery responds to John McGinn horror tackle during Tottenham thrashing

Aston Villa boss Unai Emery wants his side to forget about the 4-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday and focus on their Europa Conference League semi-final with Ajax on Thursday. Villa conceded four second half goals to Spurs, two of them coming after John McGinn was sent off for serious foul play following a tackle on Destiny Udogie.

James Maddison opened the scoring five minutes after half-time and Brennan Johnson doubled Spurs’ lead soon after. McGinn was given his marching orders just after the hour mark and Villa kept Spurs at bay until two injury time goals were scored by Son Heung-min and the on-loan Timo Werner.

Spurs are now just two points behind Villa in fourth place, but crucially have a game-in-hand on Emery’s men meaning qualification for the Champions League is in their hands. “John McGinn has played here and been strong, comfortable, very passionate and he’s a not a player doing things with bad intentions,” former Arsenal boss Emery said post-match.

“I think the red card maybe could be a red card but not bad intentions.” Emery added: “I didn’t speak a lot with the players, only I told them ‘keep going, move on, think of Thursday and West Ham United on Sunday’ and with John the same.”

Emery’s Spurs counterpart, Ange Postecoglou, was delighted with his side’s performance at Villa Park. “The whole game I was really pleased with,” he said.

“The way we handled the whole day, to be honest.” “The first half we did well to make them work hard more than anything else. They had to try and contain us and the threats they had we snuffed out.”