Unai Emery hails Aston Villa duo after Tottenham win

Unai Emery saluted Nicolas Jackson and Zion Suzuki for setting the standard as Villa claimed their first win of the Premier League season at Tottenham.

Goalkeeper Suzuki made four big saves when the match was goal-less, while Jackson netted his first league goal of the season as the visitors claimed a 3-2 victory.

Both have big shoes to fill after replacing modern day legends Emi Martinez and Ollie Watkins in as part of Villa’s large-scale rebuild.

And Emery saw their performance in north London as a big step forward.

“Their commitment to us, challenging themselves to achieve what we did before and replacing important players, is fantastic,” he said.

“But every player needs to understand how we can feel better collectively and how they can help us with their qualities, exploiting our best performance.

“Today, we made a clear step forward in improving that. Zion is maintaining the performance he showed before, and Jackson clearly improved from the previous matches. This is the way and the example of how he played.”

Jackson doubled Villa’s lead with an excellent individual strike midway through the second half, after Johan Manzambi had earlier broke the deadlock.

Emi Buendia then made it 3-0 with a thumping effort before Spurs scored two late consolations through Conor Gallagher and Jan Paul van Hecke.

Jackson’s strike was his second since joining from Chelsea for an initial £47.5million.

“I know the player and he is able to exploit his qualities and score goals,” said Emery, who previously managed Jackson at Villarreal.

“We also need to try to set him up and exploit his qualities within our structure. We need him in positions close to scoring.

“He had, more or less, more chances to score. He understands better everything that we want. In the training sessions, we are trying to anticipate everything.

“Today, he did a fantastic job, exploiting the space in behind, but defensively he also did a fantastic job. He was able to play 80 minutes with the runs he made, being consistent physically.

“We are expecting him to play a lot of matches this year, so it is important to manage different moments.”