John McGinn urges Aston Villa to ‘find fire’ for Liverpool and forget Olympiacos disappointment

John McGinn says he and his team-mates owe Aston Villa fans another big performance on Monday night to get over the line and claim Champions League qualification after the disappointment of being knocked out of Europe.

Villa slumped to a 6-2 aggregate defeat at Olympiacos after losing 2-0 in Greece on Thursday night, but while a top-four finish is up for grabs with a win against Liverpool on Monday , Unai Emery’s team couldn’t ask for more. incentive to return to winning ways.

“We’re so close,” McGinn admits. “But we just have to focus on Monday night. I think we owe the fans a performance. We owe ourselves a performance after the effort throughout the season, the graft coming every day.

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“It’s been a long, tough season, but definitely one to be proud of. We don’t want to stop short. We know what we have to do. It’s in our hands. It’s going to be a very, very tough game. , we know that .

“We obviously have the crucial benefit of other results that could go our way, but we want to do the job ourselves and get into the top four, which would be an incredible achievement, although it won’t take away the disappointment of tonight.

“The fans have been there for the last few weeks and it’s up to us to deliver now. You can wave as many scarves as you want, shout our names as loud as you want, but it’s up to us to find that fire and get us over the line. We are extremely disappointed.

“We made it a little bit. We know that. But we’ll learn from it and come back better and stronger next year.”

McGinn added: “There was a determination for five or six weeks. That’s the frustrating thing, we could have wrapped it up (top four) by now. But the Premier League is extremely difficult. We’ve certainly had a few setbacks to- along the way but this group will keep fighting.

“We fought on Thursday but it wasn’t enough, but on another night we could have turned it around. It wasn’t to be. Unfortunately, we have to wish Olympiacos all the best.”