The Premier League have announced a raft of fixture changes over Christmas and New Year, several involving Villa:-
Liverpool, Anfield – moved from Sat 4th December to Mon 6th December, 8pm kick off.
Tottenham, Villa Park – December 26th, kick off now at 5.30pm.
Chelsea, Stamford Bridge – moved from Sat 1st January to Sun 2nd January, 1.30pm kick off.
Gérard Houllier probably won’t mind the two week break in the domestic fixture schedule as he continues to settle in, but he will be without several key players:-
Ashley Young and Stephen Warnock were called up to the England squad for Tuesday’s European Qualifier against Montenegro at Wembley.
Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouneso are with England Under 21s ahead of the play-off against Romania for next year’s European Under 21 Championship in Denmark. The first leg is at Carrow Rd on
Instead of any tactical analysis in this Statshack, I thought I’d share something I was looking at ahead of this game: our record at White Hart Lane over the last few seasons.
The table below shows both teams’ complete and incomplete passing numbers which, of course, is the basis for “Completed Pass Share”. I’ve also included the possession figures and then further combined the two percentages to form what I’m calling “Game Share”. What I’m trying to achieve is
You won’t have needed to be too eagle eyed to have noticed the EA Sports logo on screen when you’ve been watching the Premier League this season, especially when any statistics have been presented.
EA Sports have taken over from Actim as the official stats provider and that includes what was the Actim Top 100 Index, which has been a regular monthly(ish) feature here at Aston Villa Central.
Although the Actim system was proprietary and they didn’t divulge exactly what
A tale of two halves, or Jeckyll and Hyde as I sometimes like to think of performances so different either side of the break. That might be overstating things, but at half time Villa had 49% of possession, by full time that had shrunk to just 42%.
That might not seem like an enormous swing, and it’s an oversimplification, but if you assumed the ball was in the possession of one team or the other for all of the 90
Gérard Houllier has signed the contract he said he would. It’s a three year deal. Really pretty simple, not sure why it’s such huge news, but it seems to be lighting up the wires at the moment, so to speak.
Previously, Emile Heskey was dominating the headlines, for the right reasons for once, following the impact he made against Blackburn midweek. A welcome change, but not a sustainable one I suspect. Hopefully I’m way off the mark because
Blackburn return to Villa Park in the Carling Cup tonight, but if it’s to be a repeat of the 6-4 thriller back in January, it will likely be for different reasons. Sam Allardyce has stated explicitly that the Premier League is their priority at all costs and after a bruising encounter with Fulham last weekend, on top of a Lancashire derby against Blackpool next weekend, Sam’s unlikely to field his strongest possible XI.
But neither will Houllier, who’s hit the
I ran this as a regular feature last year and I don’t see any reason for it not to continue. I find it interesting at least. Same premise as before, which was explained in #01 if it’s not immediately obvious, the only change being the mapping of the three promoted and three relegated teams:-
Newcastle = Burnley
WBA = Hull
Portsmouth = Blackpool
That reflects their finishing positions in the respective leagues.
You’ll probably be aware that last season, after five games, we
I’ve talked about this many, many times: possession football is all well and good, but if you don’t move the ball into position to score goals often enough, you don’t win many games. Our home record was 13th best in the league last season as we consistently struggled to roll inferior opposition over and that was to be the key challenge to address this season.
If Gérard Houllier learned anything from his position in the stands, it’s that grinding out