I only knock these Statshacks up for Premiership games, can you believe that it’s almost 3 weeks since the last one?  No wonder we have all these games to make up this month!

This one shows more domination from Villa than I was expecting with 60% of possession and a CPS of 65%, which pretty much means we outpassed them 2:1. Someone let me know when they start awarding points for that though!

I watched the headlines flowing through Twitter after the game and the narrative seemed to be that this was a battle of defences. Sure, we have the stingiest defence in the league, but I think more credit is being given to Stoke’s home record than it’s really due. They may have only lost 4 home games this season, but that still only places them 13th in a table based on home losses, or 12th based on goals conceded at home. The statistics suggest that we had a good reason to expect a better result.

Throw Ins

We all know from bitter experience that Stoke are capable of utilizing Rory Delap’s long throw in to devastating effect, but their over reliance on this tactic is comical and, in this case at least, massively ineffective. The graphic below depicts all of Delap’s 20 throw-ins, all but 3 of them long throws into the box, but only 1 of them successful. We know as well as anyone that it only takes one and you have to concentrate until the final whistle, but talk about playing the percentage game!

When Is A Target Man Not A Target Man?

When there’s two of them and both of them drift deeper on average than one of your wingers. I noticed MON telling both Carew and Heskey on several occasions to push up. Apparently they didn’t listen. It’s not so bad when you only have one of these two and they’re flicking on to Gabby in a more advanced position, but when they’re both doing the same thing and there’s no one there… well, it doesn’t work out so well.

I know we had a great spell at Reading with both of these two on the pitch, but from what I’ve seen before then it’s clear that they are interchangeable and probably shouldn’t be paired up. Gabby was only on the pitch for 15 minutes and it was at the end when we were pressing, so I’m not showing his average position, but you might be interested to know that it’s just outside the box, to the left of the D about level with it’s apex. Just saying.

The average position map really can be revealing sometimes. In this case, the midfield 4 and full backs are more or less in their usual positions, but it’s noticeable that without Gabby on the pitch occupying a more advanced position that Dunne and Collins are sat deeper than they were in the last games against Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool, although I’d take the point that we were at Villa Park for those games.

However, I think the point of the mobility and pace that Gabby brings to us up front and the knock on benefits that provides throughout the rest of the team, all the way to the back, appears to be well made here.

Then again, we could have just been getting pegged back by all those throw-ins.

0	Stoke	Mar 13th 2010	Aston Villa	0
	40%	Possession %	60%
	16	Shots	12
	3	On Target	3
	8	Corners	6
	2	Offsides	2
		Scorers
		Booked	Cuellar, Dunne, Milner, Warnock
		Sent Off
	114	Good Passes	215
	35%	CPS %	65%
	82	Bad Passes	72
	58%	Completion %	75%
	22	Interceptions	13
	23	Tackles Won	32
	28	Tackles Lost	18
	3	Blocks	5
	10	Free Kicks	9
Starting XI: 1. Friedel 24. Cuellar 25. Warnock 29. Collins 5. Dunne 19. Petrov 8. Milner 7. Young 6. Downing 18. Heskey 10. Carew Subs: 22. Guzan 14. Delfouneso 4. Sidwell 11. Agbonlahor 2. Young 23. Beye 16. Delph
Average Position Map

[Original data and graphics courtesy of ESPN and The Guardian]