Let me just preface this post by pointing out that I don’t generally spend much time taking potshots at other Aston Villa blogs, but yesterday was one of those days and, in a fashion, so is today. It’s a coincidence, nothing more.
Last summer I spotted a claim being repeated here and there that Aston Villa’s spend on transfer fees under Randy Lerner was really no better than under Doug Ellis if you expressed it as a percentage of the
Aston Villa have 8 players in the Actim Top 100 Index this week, second only to Chelsea, with Gabby Agbonlahor leading the way in 3rd place with 475 points.
Focusing on Gabby for a moment; he may well be the embodiment of the Aston Villa style efficiency I’ve been discussing a lot recently. Wayne Rooney tops the goal scoring charts with 21 Premiership goals this term, but if he had Gabby’s goal per shot ratio he’d actually have 31!!
Wayne
One of the things that I enjoy about pulling the Statshacks together is that the statistics often don’t reflect my perception of the game, which really challenges what I think I know, and this one is no exception. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that the scoreline flatters us much, but if you were to make a judgment based solely on the numbers below you might not agree.
You can see for yourself that the passing and possession
The first thing I notice when I create the average position maps is whether our players were deeper or more advanced in comparison to the previous match; in this case the game against Tottenham. This is most noticeable among the back four and I was encouraged to note that they were considerably more advanced on average during this game, especially Carlos Cuellar.
I sang Fabian Delph’s praises on Twitter during the game, I sang them again in the first review
Here’s a little table I thought worth sharing ahead of our game with Man Utd later tonight. This shows how the Premiership would look if we only included the record against teams in the top half of the table. Since there’s obviously a differing number of games played, it’s sorted on a points per game basis, although that doesn’t affect Villa’s 2nd place position.
Team
Pld
W
D
L
F
A
GD
Pts/Gm
Pts
Chelsea
12
8
2
2
23
8
15
2.16
26
Aston Villa
13
6
5
2
14
9
5
1.76
23
Man Utd
11
6
1
4
17
14
3
1.72
19
Arsenal
13
6
2
5
24
19
5
1.53
20
Liverpool
12
5
2
5
16
16
0
1.41
17
Tottenham
13
4
5
4
14
17
-3
1.30
17
Man City
9
2
4
3
14
17
-3
1.11
10
Burnley
14
3
4
7
11
29
-18
0.92
13
Fulham
12
3
2
7
11
16
-5
0.91
11
Birmingham
12
1
6
5
8
15
-7
0.75
9
Stoke
12
2
3
7
7
18
-11
0.75
9
Everton
11
1
5
5
13
23
-10
0.72
8
Bolton
14
2
4
8
17
33
-16
0.71
10
Wolves
13
2
3
8
7
23
-16
0.69
9
Sunderland
12
2
2
8
12
26
-14
0.66
8
Wigan
12
2
2
8
12
34
-22
0.66
8
Hull
14
2
3
9
11
34
-23
0.64
9
West Ham
12
1
4
7
12
23
-11
0.58
7
Blackburn
12
2
1
9
8
30
-22
0.58
7
Portsmouth
14
1
0
13
7
30
-23
0.21
3
I won’t show you what the table looks like versus the
The long ball debate doesn’t want to go away. Apparently Brad Friedel has recently suggested that Tottenham are fairly fond of the odd long ball themselves and I found Harry Redknapp’s response quite amusing. He basically said that Spurs weren’t a long ball team, but at the same time it’s sensible to hit a few long passes when you’ve got someone like Peter Crouch in the side and, ultimately, lots of short passes sideways and backwards don’t achieve much. For
This might seem like an odd question to introduce the statistics from Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Tottenham, but do you remember the 4-4 draw we had at White Hart Lane back in 2007? Of course you do!
Last week I was looking at how Aston Villa have performed based purely on passing over the last couple of seasons and was surprised to find that the 4-4 draw with Spurs contained our least number of passes during a game for the period
I was reading an interesting article at The Telegraph last night about Gabby Agbonlahor’s goal scoring record during the Winter months:-
The evidence is compelling: 10 goals in total in the 2006/07 season, but only two scored between November ‘06 and April ‘07. 11 goals in the 2007/08 season, but none between January and end of March ’08. 12 goals last season, but just two after Christmas. So when he went six games without scoring after Villa’s 1-0 win at Old
I’m starting to see a pattern here. Richard Dunne wins his third AVC Player of the Month award, this time based on the three Premiership games in January 2010. Anyone still wondering whether we have an adequate replacement for Martin Laursen on our hands? What do you mean Martin who?!?
Player of the Month – January
1st – Richard Dunne – 7.10
2nd – Ashley Young – 6.90
3rd – Stiliyan Petrov – 6.86
Previous Winners
1st
2nd
3rd
December
Richard Dunne (7.67)
James Milner (7.44)
Brad Friedel (7.25)
November
James