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
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
It lived up to the preview, we got what we expected at the Britannia Stadium. When Stoke had the ball, they were direct and made effective use of possession. When they didn’t, they dropped deep into two well organised banks of four, the midfield almost on top of the back line. Very tough to break down.
During the opening spell, 15 to 20 minutes say, Gabby & Ash were struggling to get into the game, both occupying fairly
I suppose it’s a little like the Milner deal now: it seems certain that Gerard Houllier will be joining Aston Villa, it’s just a question of finalising the details. To that end, the latest word from the street suggests the Frenchman will be joining as the new manager, not a technical director, but I’ll leave worrying about the details until we actually know what they are.
In the meantime, I’ve seen one or two people throwing their weight behind Houllier
All 20 Premiership clubs were required to submit their squads for use in the Premier League today and they were all pretty much as expected, although Luke Moore was left out of the West Brom squad, so we won’t be seeing him playing Premiership football this side of January.
Clubs were required to list up to 25 players over the age of 21 on January 1st and within that list, no more than 17 could be players not classed as “Home
Tactical analysis seems almost pointless, if ever there was a display based on mental qualities such as determination, commitment and spirit, this was it. The stats will speak for themselves, so I’ll just throw in a couple of factoids, tug my forelock and bid you good day.
Firstly, Stewart Downing. Not the best use of the ball when he saw it, but he struggled to get involved in the game. For once his central position in the average
Apologies for the delay. This one hurts, it took some serious motivation to pull it together. I still haven’t seen the whole game, not sure I want to right now, so I can’t really comment on what went wrong. You’ve no doubt all got your own ideas.
I would like to pause briefly to look at the team passing maps side by side though. It’s frequently the case that this level of data won’t reveal much, it’s
In Part I I used a little slight of hand when comparing detailed playing stats for Milner and Ireland by putting two different seasons against each other. I was open about that and it was done with the expressed purpose of illustrating that at their best, they are extremely comparable players. But will we be getting Stephen Ireland at his best?
That remains to be seen, there’s obviously no guarantees, but for what it’s worth, here are their key