I don’t do it often, but sometimes I check the average position map at half time and compare it with the version at the end of the match. Villa are frequently a second half team, I’ve never seen our team pushed back so much during a second half that the full time map reveals deeper positioning than at half time. Until this game. Rather than simply saying we were too deep in the second half, I think we have to give credit to Tottenham for taking control of the game.

Possession

Villa really were battered in the second half. The possession at half time was 40% / 60% and by full time it was 36% / 64% which, by my math, means the second half possession was 32% / 68%. One way of looking at that is a full 16% swing towards Tottenham, which is huge.

Passing

Spurs may have out passed Villa, but that’s not an unusual statistic, it’s fair to describe Aston Villa as a ‘direct’ team. You can pass it around all day long, but if you don’t stick it in the net now and again you won’t win many games. Possession and passing are key indicators for sure, but like most football stats, they don’t tell the full story.

For instance, Tottenham made roughly 100 more passes during this match than they did during their 9-1 destruction of Wigan. They also had an extra 10% share of the possession during this match and it only got them a draw.  Based on this limited sample, less possession and less passing would appear to be the key.

Over the course of the season so far, Aston Villa rank 13th in the Premiership in terms of number of completed passes while Tottenham rank 5th. For the record, West Ham, Wigan, Fulham, Everton, Portsmouth & Burnley all rank above Villa for this statistic, but all have scored less goals and rank below us in the only table that matters.

It’s difficult to understand being dominated by any team in this fashion, especially at home, but if this is giving you cause to panic you should think about how you regard the performance at Anfield. Granted, it was away from home, but most Villa fans feel that was a strong performance, yet we had even less possession and Liverpool made even more passes than Tottenham managed during this game.

What did all that possession and all those passes get Liverpool in that game? Oh yeah, a 3-1 defeat!!

1	Aston Villa	Nov 28th 2009	Tottenham	1
	36	Possession %	64
	13	Shots	25
	1	On Target	7
	7	Corners	9
	0	Offsides	1
10′ Agbonlahor		Scorers	77′ Dawson
		Booked	Huddlestone
		Sent Off
	173	Good Passes	399
	57	Bad Passes	59
	11	Interceptions	25
	36	Tackles Won	41
	27	Tackles Lost	35
	11	Blocks	2
	9	Free Kicks	13
Starting XI: 1. Friedel 2. Young 23. Beye 24. Cuellar 5. Dunne 19. Petrov 20. Reo-Coker 7. Young 8. Milner 10. Carew 11. Agbonlahor Subs: 22. Guzan 18. Heskey 4. Sidwell 6. Downing 47. Clark 26. Gardner 16. Delph
Average Position Map