Better late than never.

One thing that struck me early on during this game was the focus on the attack down the left channel. I’m not talking about simply looking for Ash on every pass, but both Gabby and Carew working the left side of the pitch. In fact, if anything, Ash played a lot deeper than usual. I put a screen shot of the average position map up at half time which really shows this effect.

There was a lot more balance in the second half, which moved the players back towards the centre a little on average, as you can see below. However, by the end of the match Villa had still focused 45% of their attacks down the left which is the sort of lopsided statistic we used to see before James Milner was settled into the side.

This was clearly MON’s instructions. Perhaps he saw a definite weakness in Wright-Phillips and Zabaleta down City’s right hand side. Additionally, although occupying a central position, Gareth Barry is a left sided player, so this would also have the advantage of isolating him from the game as much as possible. The hostile home crowd would do the rest.

Except for Sidwell coming back in place of Delph, this was the same side that faced Blackburn in the much maligned 4-4-2. For comparison sake you’ll find a side-by-side average position map at the end. Hopefully you’ll notice that the team were actually more advanced overall against City, most notably Stephen Warnock, but this is still a 4-4-2, more accurately described as a 4-4-1-1 with John Carew being in the hole.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I think it’s clear at this stage of the season that City are a force to be reckoned with and feel reasonably satisfied that Villa did a great job against such a wealth of talent. I remain unconvinced that all those egos can be successfully managed for the course of the season, so I’m optimistic that we can at least match this result when Villa travel to Manchester for the penultimate game of the season.

1	Aston Villa	Oct 5th 2009	Man City	1
	44	Possession %	56
	12	Shots	12
	1	On Target	4
	6	Corners	6
	2	Offsides	0
15′ Dunne		Scorers	67′ Bellamy
Petrov		Booked	De Jong, Wright-Phillips
		Sent Off
	217	Good Passes	329
	58	Bad Passes	84
	28	Interceptions	26
	45	Tackles Won	43
	35	Tackles Lost	37
	6	Blocks	5
	8	Free Kicks	14
Starting XI: 1. Friedel 24. Cuellar 25. Warnock 29. Collins 5. Dunne 19. Petrov 4. Sidwell 7. Young 8. Milner 10. Carew 11. Agbonlahor Subs: 22. Guzan 18. Heskey 20. Reo-Coker 21. Shorey 26. Gardner 23. Beye 16. Delph
Average Position Map