Unai Emery summed it up fairly well in his post-match press conference last week. “We wanted to win, we weren’t able to. We wanted to draw, we weren’t able to. We wanted to keep the score down to one, we weren’t able to. We wanted to score and couldn’t.” In other words, things have not exactly gone to plan for Villarreal in this Champions League semi-final tie so far. “But at home,” he added, “let’s see what we can do.”
There were parts of the first leg at Anfield that resembled one of Liverpool’s more straightforward Premier League engagements this season. Pick whatever statistic you want - shots, possession, expected goals - and they were clearly the superior of the two sides. Villarreal pressed ever so slightly more, closing down 141 times compared to Liverpool’s 139, but when you consider that they spent three-quarters of the game without the ball, that tells its own story. This was a good old-fashioned bus parking.
