First things first; CT scans have revealed that Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink has suffered no long-term damage following his nasty clash of heads with Richard Dunne. That’s good news indeed, it’s always a concern when someone apparently spends so long unconscious. He’ll be able to train next week and should be able to play again before the end of the season.

To the game itself. Well, we won this in the first 25 minutes and then coasted to the finish really. Kevin Kilbane could and should of scored, but I think it’s safe to assume that we could have responded by getting back into gear.

It’s hard to pick out much of real interest. The average position map shows our back four noticeably deeper than they’ve been for many games, which is curious since it wasn’t as if Hull were battering us. We really did just sit back and invite them to play.

For the sake of looking at something, I thought it might be interesting to put James Milner and Jimmy Bullard’s passing maps side by side. Jimmy (on the right) made 47 successful passes and 10 unsuccessful. James (on the left) made 42 good passes and failed to connect with 6. What’s interesting is the relative spaces that the players are operating in. Against lesser opposition, Bullard’s map generally looks more like Milner’s, but in this game he was clearly under instructions to keep it tight.

One of the quirks of passing statistics that you may notice from the graphic above is that it includes throw-ins and corners. 5 of Bullard’s incomplete passes actually came from the corner, 2 were attempted crosses, leaving 3 in open play. He had 45 good passes in open play which is a 94% completion rate. Milner’s open play pass completion rate was 89%.

0	Hull	Apr 21st 2010	Aston Villa	2
	49%	Possession %	51%
	15	Shots	11
	5	On Target	5
	11	Corners	9
	2	Offsides	3
		Scorers	13′ Agbonlahor, 76′ Milner (Pen)
Cairney, Fagan		Booked	Petrov, Milner
		Sent Off
	237	Good Passes	232
	51%	CPS %	49%
	74	Bad Passes	63
	76%	Completion %	79%
	18	Interceptions	22
	25	Tackles Won	36
	27	Tackles Lost	19
	2	Blocks	7
	11	Free Kicks	10
Starting XI: 1. Friedel 24. Cuellar 25. Warnock 29. Collins 5. Dunne 19. Petrov 8. Milner 7. Young 6. Downing 11. Agbonlahor 10. Carew Subs: 22. Guzan 14. Delfouneso 4. Sidwell 20. Reo-Coker 2. Young 23. Beye 18. Heskey
Average Position Map

You can find Statshacks from other games here.

[Original data and graphics courtesy of ESPN and The Guardian]

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