BARCELONA, Spain -- Unai Emery has vowed his Aston Villa team will learn from their 3-0 defeat to Barcelona in the Champions League on Tuesday, with captain John McGinn calling the match a "learning curve" for his team.
Lamine Yamal pounced on uncertainty in Villa's defence to open the scoring after just seven minutes, while Raphinha scored two in the second half to end Aston Villa's perfect start to this year's Champions League.
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Villa had won three from three heading to Barcelona but Emery saw this clash as a perfect gauge of his team's progress. Villa came up against a ruthless Barcelona side who pounced on Villa's mistakes, leaving Emery vowing his side will take lessons from this defeat.
"We compete against teams like Barcelona in the Premier League, where there are teams at this level, but this is in another country so it's a very good test of the level we want to get to and the level we want to compete in," Emery said.
"Today the test was not at the level we wanted to achieve, but left us a lot of things to learn, a lot of experiences for the players and it gives me information to analyse to try and compete at this level in hopefully the next months.
"Overall we are competing fantastically in the Champions League with nine points -- playing the match today, we still have work to do to get to this level.
"Even though over the match we were sometimes achieving it, and close to scoring goals, we needed to be more demanding of ourselves in scoring chances. The 3-0 is more than we suffered but we accept this defeat and we've taken a lot of information."
Emery said João Gomes will learn from his part in Yamal's opener, where he was put under pressure by Pedri after receiving the ball from Zion Suzuki, and his slack pass teed up Yamal who opened the scoring.
"João Gomes started not very confidently with the ball, not only for the error he made but that was part of our style, so I'm not blaming him," Emery said. "But we need experience, so it was a good experience for him as well at the highest level with how they are pressing. It's so intense.
"We have worked over four years together and we've made those mistakes before and we will always overcome those mistakes and improve as we know playing in this style is successful. We need to take those challenges and improve."
For McGinn, leading his Villa side out at Camp Nou was the realisation of a boyhood dream with his only other visit to the stadium coming when he did a stadium tour. But Barcelona's ruthlessness left an impression on McGinn and he said the experience will stand them in good stead heading forward.
"Barcelona made the right decisions at the right times and scored really good goals," McGinn told TNT Sports. "The manager spoke about being clinical at important moments in the game. When you come here 50-50s sometimes don't go your way. They also leave players up the pitch so if you lose the ball they can be away.
"I think we are competitive against teams at this level, we have shown that whether it is Bayern Munich or PSG. Tonight was a huge learning curve for us and I am sure it will stand us in good stead for the future."