Last month I took a brief look at how Aston Villa’s passing statistics stacked up against the other teams in the Premiership and although we’re just in the bottom half of the table in terms of the number of passes strung together, I think it was clear that we are simply efficient in our approach. To call us a “long ball team” is a mischaracterization.

Apparently Arsene Wenger has used this term to discuss the way we played against his team at Villa Park last night and it’s got Martin O’Neill all hot and bothered:-

He’s made a few ridiculous statements in his time here and that’s probably as good as any. That’s only an annoyance at the end of it all. Anybody who saw the game wouldn’t take that viewpoint. Ashley Young didn’t have time to play long balls when he was taking that left-back [Gaël Clichy] to the cleaners. It’s an ­appalling insult.

I’m not sure it’s such an ­”appalling insult”, but since Wenger is clearly using it as a derogatory term, it’s easy to see why MON isn’t impressed. His zinger about Ash owning Clichy was absolutely spot on too. Ouch!!

Anyway, while the ever awesome OptaJoe was checking what the statistics revealed, I was checking the old Chalkboards.  Here’s a few choice Tweets from OptaJoe, who you really should be following if you’re not already:-

9 – Nine Premier League teams played a higher proportion of their passes long than Aston Villa (16%) did this midweek. Reputation.

43 – Number of long balls played by Aston Villa v Arsenal last night. The Gunners hit 37. Similar.

Glossary: a long ball is aimed to a pitch area; a long pass is aimed towards a team-mate. Long = 35 yards and over. Explanation

Take that Wenger!!

So OptaJoe may have stolen my thunder with a few pithy Tweets of a 140 characters or less, but let’s take a look at the Chalkboards anyway. Looking at the passes for the whole game is just a complete cluster, so I broke it down into bite-sized 5 minute chunks, Villa on the left, Arsenal on the right:-

00-05 Minutes
06-10 Minutes
11-15 Minutes
16-20 Minutes
21-25 Minutes
26-30 Minutes
31-35 Minutes
36-40 Minutes
41-45 Minutes
46-50 Minutes
51-55 Minutes
56-60 Minutes
61-65 Minutes
66-70 Minutes
71-75 Minutes
76-80 Minutes
81-85 Minutes
86-90 Minutes


Well done if you scrolled all the way down here. What do you know, the Chalkboards match the stats from OptaJoe and don’t correlate with Arsene Wenger’s assessment. Quelle surprise!!