Latest Aston Villa news from BirminghamLive as Unai Emery praises John McGinn’s performance in the win over Everton

Unai Emery hailed John McGinn’s performance in Aston Villa’s 4-0 win over Everton as “amazing” as the skipper scored his first goal at Villa Park in over 22 months.

Villa started on the front foot and broke the deadlock through McGinn in the 16th minute, six minutes before Douglas Luiz doubled their advantage from the penalty spot. Leon Bailey and Jhon Duran then added two more goals for Emery’s side before full-time.

Everton have now lost five league games in a row to Villa for the first time in their history after being second best at Villa Park. Emery even had the luxury of making several changes after the hour mark ahead of the club’s Europa Conference League play-off tie with Hibernian on Wednesday.

McGinn signed for Villa for just £2.5million in 2018 from Hibernian, and ahead of his reunion at Easter Road on Wednesday, Emery said of his performance against Everton: “I am very happy for him because he scored, and he is not usually scoring a lot. He has to get to the box to create chances and to score.

“He did that perfectly for the first goal, and his performance today was very good, and is happy to play right side, left side, inside, playing as a midfielder, as a number 10 and I think he is very important for us. Like Leon Bailey last week, he didn’t play well, but today he was amazing.”

Emery said of his side’s win: “We needed to react like we did. It is not enough at the moment because after two matches we only have three points. We have to react like we did today and still be going forward.

“We had a good transition and avoided their transition. We did a very good job today. We want to create and build in this way. I feel good. We won today and we want to give the injured players the three points. We were thinking of them for this match. Now we have to play Europa Conference League.

“New chapter this season. We started very well here. The balance is five goals for and five against. We can feel something positive here at home like we did last year but we have to create a new way, a new strong feeling here with our supporters.

“Today we were very, very angry to try and get our performance at home and to forget last week’s match. We have to learn. Today we did a lot of things good but there are some moments we can do better.”