Aston Villa News 24/7It was just nanoseconds after the referee blew the final whistle on the disappointing defeat in Blackburn today before the formation criticisms began to be posted online. Of course it’s all so simple, you play 4-5-1 and you win, you play 4-4-2 and you lose!! How could Martin O’Neill not see this?!?
Now, I agree that we appear to have achieved better results when starting a game in what appears to be a 3 man central midfield with the wingers encouraged to get forward to support the lone striker. A 4-5-1 turning into a 4-3-3 if you like. But I refuse to accept the argument that a 5 man midfield simply beats a 4 man midfield. If it were really that simple we could just send out 8 midfielders – we have enough – a lone striker and someone at the back just in case. Of course, that’s just silly.
I believe I’ve seen someone somewhere split last season in to games playing 4-5-1 and games playing 4-4-2 to “prove” that 4-5-1 is the way to go. I’m sure I read an attached comment that said something along the lines of “see, the statistics prove it” followed by some criticism of the manager for failing to see the blindingly obvious. Yes, the same manager who employed the 4-5-1 in the first place.
To anyone who believes it’s really this simple, I will tell you something every statistician and scientist in the world knows – correlation does not imply causation.
I’m reminded of my younger days as a keen reader of Viz. I would always turn first to the “Top Tips” page and spend the next several minutes on the floor doubled up. One that always stuck in my mind read as follows:-
I always sleep with a large iron key under my tongue and I’ve never had a heart attack!!
Correlation does not imply causation.
The Challenge
Still not convinced? OK, lets play a little game. The 6 diagrams below show the average position of the starting XI in the six Premiership games so far. Four represent victories and the other two are from the loses.
If you feel the two loses can be attributed to the 4-4-2 formation employed then you should have no trouble picking them out.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
So which two games are 4-4-2 – A, B, C, D, E or F?
Please bare in mind that I’m also a fan of 4-5-1 myself, but on the other hand I like to see Carew and Gabby on the pitch. The point is that we’re not watching table football here, the formation is far more fluid and as MON has said recently, it’s much more about the players and the roles they’re asked to perform on the pitch.
You might also like...
4 Comments to “4-4-2 vs 4-5-1 – The Formation Challenge”
Leave a Reply
That doesn’t tell the whole story… Young & Milner swap wings every now and then, plus other players are likely to ‘drift’ into other positions (eg. Gabby will go pretty much everywhere in the opposition half if playing as a lone striker). Substitutions (especially those that cause the team to reshuffle about) will mess these stats up too.
Perhaps a more helpful statistic, given that we’re enjoying all the diagrams and statistics (which are great by the way – notice that thevillablog.co.uk has just added a statistics section too – you got here first!), would some kind of ‘mode’ average (as oppososed to mean) of position – ie. the most common position(s) taken up by each player. Then we’d have a clearer picture of where players feel ‘anchored’ to rather than just the centre of point of their wanderings throughout a match.
By the way, I love this site generally – it provides a brilliant alternative view and approach to the more popular villa blogs out there. Keep it going.
you’re absolutely correct James.
Milner & Ash appear to occupy much narrower positions than reality precisely because they spend time on opposite sides of the pitch. and as you say, as new players are introduced or the system shuffled it will also influence their average position, although less so the further into the game the changes are made.
a heat map reflects individual players’ positions more accurately, but you really need one for each player and i’ve no intention of going there!!
i agree with you entirely about the weaknesses, but it’s the same situation for all six graphics. surely if the formation were the factor in the losses that some would have you believe it would be clear in the graphics which were the 4-4-2′s and which were the 4-5-1′s?
lol yes, damo’s sudden appreciation of actim is quite interesting!!
I’d be interested to see heat maps (though you’re right not to get too statistics-heavy on us here!) – are they about on the actim website or something?
But you are absolutely right that your pics show how formation can’t be as big a factor as we believe. Personally, I think the biggest difference tactics changes (however subtle) bring about is the style of play we end up playing. When Villa are in the mindset of playing one up front, even if in practise the actual average positions change very little, the way we structure play in midfield is very different (although who knows what the statistics might actually say!).
One factor is that with Carew or Heskey up front, whether as sole striker or as part of a pair, we do play the ball up to them long fairly often as an easy option, but with Gabby on his own, our midfield play is forced to be much more intelligent – resulting in better approach play, more space to move forward into, and more nervous defences. So even if when we play 4-5-1, it’s not actually that different positionally to 4-4-2, it’s the way we play that changes things. But of course I don’t have statistics to back any of that up – what you have done brilliantly is to challenge the assumptions we make about formations!
i source most, but not all, of my stats from ESPN. they create some interesting visuals, the average position among them, using flash.
for instance, the blackburn game:- http://soccernet.espn.go.com/gamecast?id=269770&page=features&cc=5901&league=ENG.1
you’ll find the heat maps at ESPN. interestingly, there’s a bug on the average position where the away team are shown in mirror – right sided players on the left and vice versa – but the heat maps are the right way round. it’s one of the reasons why i create my own graphics.
the telegraph reports used to have a nice flash tool, but these days they’ve relegated it to be a fraction of the size that it was and slung it in the bottom right corner like some after thought.
the guardian have their chalkboards, which i also use heavily, although they’re far from infallible and they seem more focused on the path of the ball and attaching the players to that rather than the other way around.
the chalkboards can be useful in demonstrating that there may be a lot of passing going on in a 5 man midfield, but the majority of it is sideways and backwards. ok, possession is retained and you can’t win without the ball, but you also can’t win if you don’t move forward at some point.