Emery: “It could have been worse, but the second leg will be different”

What feelings do you leave with?

They are Champions semifinals and you have to meet these powerful teams. Also, the surprise factor is diluted. They have not let us take control nor have we run behind their back. At Anfield, it was time to resist defensively and I think that at home it will be different and we will get more things.

How do you see the result?

We know that they are favorites and better, but we know that we can compete with them. Today we haven’t. It could have been worse. We must try to make the return leg different and play what we propose. We have been bad even taking the corners. I have a smile because we are in the semi-finals and we can score a goal to get into the tie.

He says it could have been worse…

Some offsides have been annulled and we haven’t had any chances. But there is still another match.

What happened in those ten minutes after the break?

Liverpool have been better during the 90 minutes. We needed to recover the ball and go on the counterattack and we couldn’t do it; we needed to overcome their pressure and we have done less than we would like. We have hardly made any arrivals. The 2-0 is a clear result, deserved, it could have been an even bigger difference, and the only thing to think about is that this result allows us to have a different game at home. We are here because the team has deserved it in two-game knockout rounds, in those knockout rounds we have experienced our own moments and those of our rivals. We talked at the end of the game that it will be different there.

What do you want to see different from your team?

I want to play. Prepare it, play it and see if we are capable of making a different match.

With 2-0 the team has not been seen to go for goals, did they take that result for good?

We wanted to win, we couldn’t; we wanted to tie, we couldn’t; we wanted to win by the minimum, we could not; we wanted to score a goal, we couldn’t… but 2-0 will allow us to have our moments.

Did the misfortune of 1-0 break them?

We came from two qualifying rounds with the first leg at home and now the feeling is the other way around. They deserved to score at any time. They were creating chances. The goal could come, one way or another. It is true that we have had very good defensive chances. I can’t fault the result or the players at all. But I want to be optimistic about the second leg. Against Juventus and Bayern we had the support in the bad moments of the home game, today we didn’t. We’ll see if we can do it differently at home. That is the challenge. A Champions League semi-final requires going one step further.

Will you have Gerard Moreno on Tuesday?

Gerard gives us a lot of things up front, he keeps the ball for us, he gives us punch. We don’t know if he will be. But I think he is more yes than no. IN the total conditions I don’t know. But today there have been footballers on the pitch who are going to shine more at home and we hope that on a collective level we will make their characteristics shine more. We have played a game below what I wanted, but the result is not that far away. I wanted to have options in the second leg, now we are going to have fewer options, but we do.

Villarreal deserves to dream that it can…

We have experience, a lot. We have found it against other teams, in other games. A player can be bad today and next week very well. There is one thing we have to do. They have not felt threatened by Villarreal. The challenge is that they feel difficulties there. That will be our goal. We are in the semifinals with a smile and we are going to play the next game.

What would you say to the fans?

Thank them for the displacement, what we are experiencing together, now we are going to experience all this in Villarreal. We are going to play with a disadvantage on the scoreboard and against a favourite. Today we wanted to be us but we couldn’t. Let’s see if we can’t like today or if we can like we have done on other occasions.