Unai Emery on Lindelof’s impact in defence: “I called Juan Mata, his teammate in Manchester United three or four years ago, and I coached Mata in Spain, and he’s a fantastic guy, an intelligent guy, and I called him speaking about the possibility to sign Lindelöf as a player, as a person”

I was delighted when we signed him, always thought he was a top, top player stuck in a shit, shit club. He was always excellent particularly against us.

Off the ball he reads the game so well, he’s good aerially, good physically, good at timing tackles and blocks, fantastic positional sense, but on the ball I think he’s shown already at Villa he’s well capable of playing football and picking a pass but some of the passing I saw him do at Man Utd, some of the attacks I saw him start, some of the long diagonals to Rashford under Ole, I still think he’s got a level or two in reserve on the ball that we haven’t seen in the claret and blue as of yet and I’m excited to see it.

Fantastic bit of business and I hope we give him another year or two on his contract as I don’t think there’s a better second choice right sided centre back we could pick up that wouldn’t cost £40m+.