defeat at Villa Park<\/a>. Yusuf Yazici replaced the injured Edon Zhegrova.<\/p>\nThe home side started brightly from the off and it didn\u2019t take them long to get back on level terms across the two games. Gabriel Gudmundsson was able to cut the ball back for Yazici who hit the ball with a wonderful first-time finish.<\/p>\n
Villa were struggling and would have been happy to hear the half-time whistle but the home side probably should have scored straight after the break when H\u00e1kon Arnar Haraldsson latched onto a missed pass from Youri Tielemans but fired his effort wide.<\/p>\n
The first shot on goal from the visitors came four minutes before the hour mark when Moussa Diaby and John McGinn linked up before finding Cash but his effort cut only find the side netting.<\/p>\n
In truth, Lille were a much better time and it looked just a matter of time before they doubled their lead on the night and it eventually came from a set-piece. Andre was able to break free and were able to get on the end of a Harldsson corner to head home.<\/p>\n
Villa\u2019s first shot on goal came in the 82nd minute. Once again from Cash, but he was denied by Lucas Chevalier in the Lille goal.<\/p>\n
Moments after that chance, the visitors made it 2-1 on the night through Cash. Chevalier collided with his teammate Nabil Bentaleb, allowing the ball to fall to the Polish right-back who was able to fire Villa back into the tie.<\/p>\n
The game went into extra time and the only real chance fell to Villa. Chevalier denied Leon Bailey and the ball fell to Luiz who headed towards goal but Lille\u2019s keeper was in no mood to give up that easy.<\/p>\n
Then came the drama of the penalty shoot-out.<\/p>\n
Emi Mart\u00ednez proved to be the difference between the two sides saving the first and fifth penalty to put Villa into the Semi-Final where they will take on Olympiacos.<\/p>\n
What the manager said<\/h3>\n
Emery:<\/strong> \u201cPlaying quarter-finals in Europe is always very difficult\u2026 we had an advantage from the first leg and I knew that it was not enough, but it was important to get an advantage from home.<\/p>\n\u201cToday, we struggled in the first half and we didn\u2019t play like we are more or less playing. In the second half, we were getting better and then when they scored the second goal, it was a difficult moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up Next<\/h3>\n
Aston Villa will host Bournemouth in the Premier League at Villa Park on Sunday with a 3pm kick-off.<\/p>\n
Original Source: A Villa Fan<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the draw had taken place for the Quater and Semi-Finals of the Uefa Conference League, I admit, I was worried. Aston Villa were drawn away from home on both<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astonvilla.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}