Villa face a daunting task in Tuesday’s quarter-final second leg at Villa Park, trailing 3-1 from last week’s encounter in France. A late goal from Nuno Mendes in the first leg put PSG firmly in the driving seat.
While the odds are stacked against Villa in their debut Champions League season, Emery is no stranger to dramatic European turnarounds.
He was, ironically, at the helm of PSG when they suffered a humiliating collapse against Barcelona in 2017, surrendering a 4-0 first-leg advantage.
Now, he’s hoping to orchestrate a comeback of his own with Villa. Emery is calling on his players to create their own memorable story in the competition.
“I have experiences of coming back, positively and negatively,” Emery said.
“But now it’s something different. We want to write the history with Aston Villa. Last year in the Conference League and this year in the Champions League and hopefully for a long time in Europe.
“Because my experiences before were different, sometimes losing away and winning at home, sometimes losing at home and winning away.
“But I’m not going to remind the players of those experiences because my idea and my every word with the players is sending the message how we are doing this way and how we are getting experiences together here with Aston Villa.
“With the players we are, with the experiences we are adding in our back last year and this year.
“As well with the combination we have with our players mentally and as well tactically to play, being so demanding in our process to get opportunities and believing to beat tomorrow PSG.”
Emery said that Mendes’ late goal at the Parc des Princes did not fundamentally change Villa’s outlook on the tie and that they have to win the game regardless.
He said: “Ok, 2-1, 3-1 it changes something. A lot, no. Why? We have to win. We have to win with 2-1 and 3-1 and now we have to win by one more goal.
“We competed there like we planned, the result we achieved was not really a bad result. We were in good balance for the second leg. The objective is to win.”
Morgan Rogers, who put Villa 1-0 up in Paris last week, says his side believe they can produce the comeback.
“There’s massive belief. Most people wrote us off before the tie,” he said.
“We know the task at hand. We know what we need to do but we’re excited under the lights at home playing this competition in the quarter-final.
“There’s not many places better to be, and if anyone’s going to turn it around, it’s going to be us.
“It’s down to us, and I think we’re excited for that challenge, looking forward, but we know it’s going to be difficult.
“We’re not saying we’re going to do it by any stretch of the imagination, but we will definitely give it a go and go out to win 100 per cent.”
Aston Villa v Paris Saint-Germain kicks off at 8pm with live coverage on Amazon Prime Video.
