Aston Villa told to keep the faith despite Champions League defeat in Paris

Villa fell to a 3-1 first leg defeat in France on Wednesday night, meaning they have it all to do in next Tuesday’s second leg. 

But the message from Emery remains confident, with the boss believing everything is still to play for in what will be a raucous atmosphere at Villa Park.

"We will play at home next week and it will be a huge challenge for us, but we will feel strong at home with our supporters at Villa Park," he said.

"We believe in our supporters, we believe in Villa Park and that the players can get the best performance next week."

Emery thinks next week’s return leg will be very different in tone to that at the Parc des Princes, which saw his team have less than 25 per cent possession and face 29 attempts on their goal.

Despite that, Villa took the lead through Morgan Rogers, before the hosts roared back with superb goals from Desire Doue, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Nuno Mendes, the latter netting in stoppage time to strengthen his team’s grip on the tie.

“It’s up to us to do the work in the return leg,” said left-back Lucas Digne. “We’ll obviously have to rediscover ourselves a little more, but it’s still possible and we’ll do everything we can to achieve it.

“It was our game plan (to defend deep), and we managed to open the scoring at the start, which was the hardest thing to do.

“We’re playing against a great team, you have to admit, like Désiré’s shot, it’s incredible.”