Villa won the first-leg of their Champions League round 16 tie 3-1 in Belgium.
“It was like we planned,” Emery said.
“My expectations were more or less the difficulties we had, with the respect we have for them, trying to adapt to them more than I usually want.
“After the analysis we did and the match we played here in November, they are performing very well, they have a very good structure tactically with the ball, we decided to respect them when they were keeping ball possession with their positioning.
“The most important thing is how we competed in the match; how we competed at set pieces for the first goal, how we competed defensively sometimes deeper than I wanted.
“Sometimes we needed the goalkeeper, sometimes we needed Tyrone Mings’ save – we can remember the match we played here before with Tyrone and today he saved with a very good action.
“We subbed players for the last 30 minutes and kept the same gameplan. We were resilient sometimes and we scored two goals in the last ten minutes.
“There are still 90 minutes to play. We know their capacity. They won against Atalanta and they competed today very well. The most important thing now is to watch the match again with the players and to understand the difficulties we can face in Europe against every team.
“Our experiences last year through Conference League was the same. I’m happy but calm. I’m taking balance because there are still 90 minutes to play.”