Unai Emery bemoans Aston Villa finishing but sees positives in Hull draw

Unai Emery felt Villa paid the price for not being ruthless after they were held to a frustrating 0-0 draw at Hull.

Villa claimed their first point of the Premier League campaign but are still searching for their first goal after both John McGinn and Emi Buendia missed big second half chances.

Emery admitted the draw was “not enough” but claimed to be happy with the direction his team are taking after a summer of huge change.

McGinn and Buendia both missed from close range after Konstantinos Tzolakis had denied Ross Barkley in the first half.

“It is not enough because we are not being clinical, we are not being ruthless,” said Emery.

“But we created chances. We are building and there is still work to do. This is the direction I want.

“It’s a good point. It is not enough. Now we are building the team.

“We are trying to understand with the new players how we can build our structure, try to get as strong as possible our ideas.

“Today we showed it, more or less. After the 90 minutes I can feel there is a lot of positive news.

“There are some players getting better. Collectively, how we played and respond on the field, trying to understand our ways like that, we did it. After the plan this morning we were speaking, we did it.”

Villa dominated possession but seemed to run out of ideas as the match wore on and it was Hull who almost won it, when Mohamed Belloumi hit the bar with a curling effort.

Emery, meanwhile, claimed not to have seen two penalty shouts for his team when Nicolas Jackson and Matty Cash were both shoved over by Nobel Mendy.

“I didn’t watch the action again - I don’t know,” he said. “Normally I don’t want to speak about the referees. I will watch it again in a few minutes.

“Hopefully it wasn’t clear. In case it was clear, the VAR should be there.”