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Emery focused on Europa League push, not Sancho's Villa future

  /  autty

Unai Emery says it is not the time to speak about Jadon Sancho's future with Aston Villa, as they prepare to face Bologna in the second leg of their Europa League quarter-final.

Sancho joined Villa on loan from Manchester United at the start of the season, despite this being his final campaign under contract at Old Trafford.

And with the winger set to become a free agent in June, Borussia Dortmund's managing director Lars Ricken said the club were exploring the chance to take him back to Germany. 

Having struggled to make his mark with either United or former loan club Chelsea, Sancho has made 31 appearances for Villa, though 14 of those have come from the bench.

In his 1,520 minutes played this season, Sancho has only scored one goal and supplied three assists, while he missed Villa's last two matches – including a 3-1 away win in the first leg against Bologna – with a shoulder injury.

"We are focused 100%, collectively and individually. To speak about the future now does not make sense," Emery said when asked about Sancho's future on Wednesday.

"We spoke a lot during the season with him, about his task with us, how we need his performances, his qualities, but now it is about tomorrow.

"He is coming back. He is a fantastic player and he needs to be consistent. He has been demanding and he adapted to our structure.

"It is a pity in the last two weeks he has been injured, because he finished before the break playing fantastically."

Emery was also asked about goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, who was forced to withdraw from the team for Sunday's 1-1 draw with Nottingham Forest after sustaining a calf injury in the warm-up.

The Argentina international should be available on Thursday, but with Emery being impressed by the performance of stand-in Marco Bizot, he has a fight on his hands to start.

"He is a fantastic goalkeeper, a fantastic guy, he is ready. He is performing amazingly and we are very proud of him," Emery said of the World Cup winner.

"Every day we are praying to have everybody available to play. When something happens in the last minute, like Sunday, wow, how well Marco responded.

"Today he [Martinez] trained with us. As normal, he is going to be available for tomorrow and tomorrow we will decide."

The Opta supercomputer assigns Villa a 97% chance of advancing to the last four and a 64% chance of making the final. At 42%, they are the model's overwhelming favourites to lift the trophy.

And that is what midfielder Youri Tielemans is aiming for, as he said: "You play to win it. That's my mentality and also the mentality of many players in the squad.

"When you get there, you have to make sure you play the game as well as you can and not think about the end, because that's where you can get carried away sometimes. We need to keep playing like we do and hopefully win those games."