Villa stun Tottenham with early blitz in FA Cup clash

Jacob Ramsey struck within the first minute, setting the tone for Villa's dominance, while Morgan Rogers added another to secure the lead. Mathys Tel managed a late consolation for Spurs, but it was Villa's day at Villa Park.

Unai Emery, Villa's manager, was full of praise for his squad's performance. "Morgan is performing fantastic," Emery said. "His commitment to do his task every day from the first minute to 90 is great. We did a lot of positive things today."

He emphasized the need for continuous improvement, stating, "It will be very demanding for us in this competition, so we will need to improve and increase our level. We are with the motivation to get something in this competition as well as the Premier League and Champions League. We still have a lot of work to do."

On Ramsey's contribution, Emery added, "He played really well. We are happy when the player is scoring. He had more chances. Of course, we need his best performances from Ramsey. He is getting better and being consistent without injuries.

" We will need players who are physically good for the rest of the season."

Emery also spoke about the integration of new signings, noting, "There are players coming back in the coming weeks. We also have players like Donyell Malen, Andres Garcia, Marco Asensio, and Marcus Rashford, and hopefully, we can build the team in the structure we want to create."

Regarding Rashford's debut, he mentioned, "We have to protect every player and try to adapt them into our structure and use their skills. Asensio, Rashford, and Malen are versatile players in the attacking third. We can feel confident to have them."

On the other side, Tottenham's manager Ange Postecoglou was candid about his team's shortcomings. "Obviously disappointed we don't progress," he said. "It wasn't a great start, that's the last thing you want, and we really struggled to get some control. Then we had an enormous chance at 1-0 we didn't take to equalise."

Postecoglou acknowledged the difficulty of the game, "We got a better grip of the game but unfortunately fell short. When you go a goal down it gives the opposition momentum and confidence. You want to wrestle control early and we didn't do that."

He maintained an optimistic outlook, "We were still in the game (at halftime). We just needed to hang in there. The second half was a lot more like ourselves. The second goal sort of made it a bit more difficult but I always felt we were a threat - unfortunately just not enough."

Reflecting on the broader context of the season, Postecoglou remarked, "Nothing really changes. We have a couple of weeks now where we don't have midweek games. This group has done an unbelievable job for two and a half months. I can't praise them enough, playing twice a week since November.

"They'll get the chance to reset now and finish the season strong."

He also touched on the squad's health, "Europe is still very important to us, we're still in a great spot there, and we'll hope to get some players back over the next two weeks. We'll get players back which will help; we had 11 first-team players out today. Take that out of any team for one game and they would struggle, we've been doing that for two and a half months."

In summary, Villa's early goals and solid defense were decisive, while Tottenham, despite their resilience, couldn't overturn the early deficit.  

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