I’ve taken my sweet time with this one on purpose. I generally have a pretty good idea what the headline numbers look like by the final whistle and I know the more technical statistics almost immediately after the game has finished these days. If taken in isolation, these stats wouldn’t make encouraging reading, but that only serves to prove why we should take time look at these things as a whole and recognise that nothing can be “proven”
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I’m a little short on time right now, so I’m just going to dump the numbers and run. One thing I just want to draw your attention to is the possession. I had a conversation with someone on Twitter recently who felt that our share of possession under Houllier has been less than in the past. I’m not convinced that is the case, in fact, while it’s too early to say really, it look extremely similar to
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Fulham weren’t anything close to spectacular, yet the stats show that their point wasn’t undeserved, contrary to what a lot of Villa fans felt at the final whistle, which begs the question of why we should find much to be encouraged by.
Well, four academy graduates in the side and all did well, Bannan’s superb pass and Albrighton’s take down and shot set those two apart. The chalkboards will reveal exactly why Houllier didn’t want the ball in the air
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We’re struggling for goals at Villa right now. In fact, we have been for a while. What we need, then, is a striker who can bang in 20 goals a season, right?
Well, it would be a good start to have a player capable of that feat, but a lack of goals is just a symptom of our problems, it’s not necessarily the cause. With the right opportunities, we may even already have that striker.
I half joked that
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We’re 10 games into the 2010/11 Premiership season, so it’s time to compare this season with last season both chronologically and using an apples-to-apples comparison, or as close as is practically possible. This is the 2nd in the series this year, you can see the first post, which was a snapshot after five games, here and you can also check the 2009/10 vs 2008/09 comparison after 10 games here.
Since the form over the last five games is WLDLD, you
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It’s not so much a cliché as a truism: goals change games. Sometimes not scoring does too. Had Downing’s early woodwork striking effort gone in and/or had we been awarded a penalty for the challenge on Reo-Coker shortly after, it might have been a different game.
The goal we conceded, when we conceded it and in the manner it was given away clearly took some of the wind out of our sails in a much more traditional sense.
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Let’s be completely honest here, Chelsea have a considerably better side than we do and we have little practical reason to expect to beat them, yet their record at Villa Park isn’t that good. Over the last five visits now they’ve won only once, lost twice and drawn twice.
We beat them 2-1 last season despite having just 32% possession and being out-passed 407 to 167, a 29% share of the completed passes. The season before, Chelsea won 1-0
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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
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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
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