Unai Emery admits he has a “challenge” on his hands to make the most of strikers Jhon Duran and Ollie Watkins after both scored in Aston Villa’s 3-2 come-from-behind victory over Everton.
Watkins struck his first two goals of the Premier League season either side of the break to cancel out Everton’s two-goal lead, given to them by Dwight McNeil and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Duran has been Villa’s super-sub in recent weeks and this was no different as he collected the ball 30 yards from goal and arrowed the ball past Jordan Pickford for a stunning winner that even the England number one watched back on the big screen.
Emery knows he has a welcome selection headache on his hands, and told a press conference: “Jhon’s potential is huge, I want to support him and help him and then he will get better, his confidence will grow with goals.
“He (Duran) came back on Friday and only trained once after playing with the international team and has been good with the matches he’s played, scoring goals, and for this reason he was playing the starting XI with Colombia.
“Today he scored a goal and had more chances to score but today he was very good.
“We have to feel comfortable with those strikers and have to figure out how we can play with two strikers, play with one or both, this is the challenge we have.
“Duran started playing two years ago, he scored against Liverpool here, scored shooting outside the box against Ajax. Sometime he scores, sometimes he doesn’t.
“He has potential to explore a lot more things with us – after he decided to stay here with us we started focusing more on his process, we are happier.”
Watkins failed to hit the back of the net in his first three games of the season but Emery had every confidence that the goals would come.
He added: “Ollie was creating chances in other matches we played before and didn’t score but he kept going.
“Because he was creating chances, the goals are coming and today was the day, it was fantastic.
“Even after two goals he had more chances to score but this is the way – his confidence is important for him, but I was always confident with the goals he scored.”
Everton allowed a two-goal lead to slip for the second successive game and fell to a fourth straight league defeat, leaving them still without a point.
Manager Sean Dyche thought his side fought well and were undone by a moment of brilliance from Duran.
He said: “Very frustrating last time (against Bournemouth) but today was a different scenario.
“We tried to do a lot of things today but we didn’t get the outcome so therefore we have to keep moving and thinking.
“Personally I thought the tactics were delivered well today, 2-1 up at half-time doing what I told us to do.
“The biggest moment of the game is we go through on goal and think we go 3-1 up, but sometimes everything seems to go against you.
“It’s 2-2 and they score a ‘worldie’ and you think that’s the way things go, correcting that is difficult when someone smashes it in from that far out.”
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