Unai Emery remains upbeat despite Aston Villa’s slow start to Premier League

Unai Emery insists there is no reason for alarm at Aston Villa despite another frustrating result for his goal-shy side.

Emery’s side were beaten 3-0 by Crystal Palace at Villa Park on Sunday, leaving them 19th in the Premier League at the season’s first international break having claimed just one point and not scored a single goal.

Villa’s 19-game unbeaten home run also came to end on what was a dismal evening, and home supporters made their frustration clear at the final whistle, but Emery tried to remain upbeat.

The Spaniard said: “A lot of things we had a lack of and, OK, we only have one point and we lost at home after a long time, but we have to keep balanced.

“Now the (transfer) window is closing and we have a lot of players going with the national teams, but we are going to come back next week together.

“I am confident we will improve a lot of things, actually, we don’t have.”

Villa’s night started with uncertainty as first-choice goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez was left out amid rumoured interest from Manchester United.

His replacement Marco Bizot had a tough game, conceding the early penalty from which Jean-Philippe Mateta opened the scoring.

He was then beaten all ends up by a Marc Guehi stunner in the second half and Villa’s misery was compounded when Ismaila Sarr headed home from close range following a long throw-in.

Palace’s victory was their first in the league, but wrapped up a successful opening spell of the campaign in which they won the Community Shield, qualified for the Europa Conference League league stage and avoided defeat.

Manager Oliver Glasner’s only regret concerned the injuries suffered by Adam Wharton and Sarr, which could impact their availability for international duty with England and Senegal respectively.

Glasner said: “Hopefully, it’s not too serious. I just blame myself when you have two muscle injuries. I think maybe I should have rotated a little bit more.

“On the other side, everybody knows we were quite short of numbers in this period, and it is how it is. You have to accept it. It makes no sense complaining about it, but I will learn my lessons from it.”