Emery’s men through to knockouts

Aston Villa sealed their place in the knockout rounds of the Europa League with two games to spare as they came through a tricky test to beat Basel 2-1 away from home.

Villa made the trip to St. Jakob Park in great spirit after igniting hope of an improbable Premier League title challenge with a 2-1 win over Premier League leaders Arsenal.

Backing up that success with victory in Switzerland promised to be a difficult task, but Evann Guessand put them ahead in the 12th minute.

After seeing a goal disallowed, Basel equalised in the 34th minute through Flavius Daniliuc, but Villa displayed their resilience as Youri Tielemans restored their advantage with a goal that proved the difference as Unai Emery’s men moved onto 15 points from six games.

They stay joint top of the table and are eight points clear of the 25th-placed team with two games to go, meaning they will at least feature in the play-off round, with a top-eight finish and automatic qualification for the top eight looking likely.

Guessand gives Aston Villa the lead

Basel had started relatively brightly and threatened the Villa goal, but Guessand gave the visitors the lead with their first shot on target, his effort on the turn squirming into the bottom-right corner after the Swiss side failed to clear a corner.

The hosts appeared to have levelled when Leo Leroy fired unerringly into the bottom-left corner at the end of a Basel counter, only for the goal to be ruled out by VAR for an offside in the build-up.

But Basel were undeterred by that misfortune and did restore parity thanks in part to a former Premier League star.

Tielemans seals it after Shaqiri brilliance

Xherdan Shaqiri made the most of a free-kick in a good position by producing a superb left-wing delivery and, with goalkeeper Marco Bizot in two minds over whether to try to claim the ball, Daniliuc diverted the cross home on the volley.

Yet Basel could only last eight minutes into the second half before falling behind again, Tielemans’ side-foot finish from the edge of the area possessing both the power and accuracy to beat Marwin Hitz after he was teed up by Emi Buendia.

Hitz was the busier of the goalkeepers in the second half as Villa succeeded in taking the sting out of the game after re-establishing their lead, and they can now attack the remainder of the campaign with confidence with the first part of their task in this competition achieved with precious little difficulty.