Unai Emery met with the media at Bodymoor Heath on Friday afternoon, ahead of Saturday's Premier League trip to Southampton.
The Villans return to league action at St. Mary's over the weekend, after a Champions League quarter-final first leg defeat in Paris to PSG on Wednesday.
Emery spoke with members of the local and national media at Villa's training base ahead of their visit to the south coast, discussing facing the Saints, objectives, focus and mentality.
Read all the key lines from his pre-match press conference below...
On enjoying the experiences...
“I am so focused. I told you here, we are meeting a lot here with the press conference, because we are playing a lot of matches.
“My message is the same. We are enjoying now this period, we are enjoying to play in Champions League and we are as well in the semi-final in two weeks in London, but the Premier League is the most important.
“Of course, our expectation, our objective during the season, is the same at the beginning, we are sending the message.
“Then, it depends how we are going in the process we are doing in the season. Now is the moment, we are in game 32 tomorrow, still seven matches to play, and we have to focus on Premier League as the most important competition.
“Before the match we played against Brentford, we were in risk in that moment not to have the opportunity like we are now, to try to face Premier League as well, with our ambition at the beginning of the season to repeat again to play in the top five positions, because the teams we are involved with in Europe, more or less, we are so, so close to get fifth position for Champions League.
“Of course, we are enjoying, and we are being very focused in Champions League, we are very focused on FA Cup, but we have to be prioritising Premier League.”
On focus...
“I want players focusing like I am focusing each match in (the) Premier League. It’s not an excuse, of course, we can remember how we were were playing sometimes in (the) middle of Champions League and we weren’t working well. We weren’t achieving our objective.
“But now, it’s not an excuse. If we are tomorrow not performing well, we are at risk.
“And of course, my message here and my message for the supporters, (is) for our objective, and my responsibility to set the objective clearly, and the players, they know it.
“Tomorrow is the most important match we are playing, now.”
On facing Southampton...
“I have one friend in football, always he is telling me you can play against every team – the winners, the losing teams.
“But even the losing teams, they are not going to lose every match. If you are not ready, you can lose against them.”
On objectives...
“We have to win tomorrow. If we weren’t winning three matches before in Premier League, of course today we were speaking, maybe we were not with the opportunity to achieve again, options, opportunity to be in the European positions, because our objective is Europe.
“Of course, we are dreaming to repeat Champions League, and our highest ambition we are setting is to play in Champions League, but we are not contenders. But last year, we weren’t contenders, and we got it.
“Now, we are there because we are performing in the last matches and the last demands we are trying to set collectively and individually is clear.
“If we are using excuses because we don’t have some players (for example), we are wrong.”
On mentality...
“I am here because I was successful. If I was not being successful in my career as a coach and demanding like I was, I am not here.
“They chose me, the owners, because I was as a coach more or less in my career, always getting my objectives through the clubs.
“Coming here is because they wanted to try to get the same, to be ambitious, to work hard, to increase our demands, to increase our objective during the process we are.”
Watch the manager's pre-match press conference in full below...
