Apologies for the delay on this one, I haven’t had much chance to look at the data and ESPN have introduced significant changes to their match graphics which have made things difficult for me. They say a picture paints a thousand words, this will be graphically heavy I feel.
Firstly, the old cliché about a game of two halves couldn’t be more apt, could it? Villa were woeful during the first half. The opening gambit with Clark moving the
One of the great things about football (sometimes) is the variety of opinions, some more valid than others. Fans are particularly vociferous in expressing those opinions after a loss. I’ve read them all. Take your pick of the players not playing yesterday; that’s why we lost. We missed Albrighton. We missed Collins. We missed a big man in the middle. Downing should play on the left. Ireland is rubbish.
If only it were that
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”
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
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
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.
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
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
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