It’s probably entirely fair that the majority of the sane football world regard Barcelona as the best team on the planet at the moment and Lionel Messi as the world’s best player. Inter Milan were the under dogs for last night’s Champions League semi final and whilst Barcelona aren’t massively superior on a man-for-man basis, it was also fair to describe them as the favourites.

But a funny thing happened; Barcelona lost 3-1.

That’s not what is intriguing me and causing this little venture from the well trodden Villa path today though. What grabbed my attention is that Mourinho’s side won the game with just 33% of the possession. They won the game by connecting just 158 passes to Barcelona’s 521. That’s a 23% share of the completed passes in the game. I’ve checked. There’s been just two matches in the last 4 seasons that Aston Villa had had a lower CPS in a game:-

• 20% – 26th December ’07 – Chelsea 4 Aston Villa 4
• 22% – 28th October ’06 – Liverpool 3 Aston Villa 1

The official Man of the Match; Wesley Sneijder, besides scoring Inter’s crucial equaliser, completed just 10 of the 26 passes he attempted during the course of the match. That’s a 38% completion rate that would make Reo-Coker wince.

30% of Inter’s attempted passes, compared to 14% of Barcelona’s, were classified as “long passes” and those passes had a completion rate of just 36% while Barcelona completed 71% of their long passes. Shhhh, don’t tell Arsene Wenger this though, he’ll call them a long ball team.

Inter’s total pass completion rate was just 58%. Barcelona hooked up 82% of the 636 passes they attempted.

So what?

We beat Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd this season with a similar share of possession and although we managed a greater share of the passing game than Inter did against Barcelona, we were far inferior by that measure too.

Could it be that organisation and team spirit go an awful long way? Could it be that a team can truly be greater than the sum of its parts? I believe that is the case and it’s one of the most important qualities MON was looking for when he was assembling the components of this team in my opinion. I sometimes see people lambaste that as if it’s a bad thing. It isn’t. It wins games.

And one final thought on the subject of bringing in the right players at the right time. Last summer there was the usual crying about lack of transfer activity and speculation about a shortage of funds. General Krulak tried to calm fears by insisting that if MON wanted to purchase a player for £30m, he could, the money would be there. Of course, that was twisted into some kind of promise of a £30m player which never materialised, leaving a lot of rattles laying on the ground beside the prams.

One of the names being banded around was a certain Wesley Sneijder. So, let’s get some perspective here people: last night Mr Sneijder was the Man of the Match against Barcelona in the San Siro. Tonight, we run out on the pitch at KC Stadium in Hull. No disrespect to Hull City or the people that live there, but come on!

Incidentally, if we win in Hull tonight, the 3 points will take us to 1,000 points to date in the Premiership. We’ll be only the fifth team to reach that milestone, you already know who the first four were. That will be quite an achievement and interesting to note that 233 of those points will have been earned under Martin O’Neill.