This is not an attempt to absolve anyone of any blame for the unacceptable performance at White Hart Lane last night, but it’s become painfully obvious to me in the last 18 months or so that in the fans’ eyes it’s players that win games… and managers that lose them.
Let me give you an example:
Towards the end of last season, in what would be Gerard Houllier’s final game on the sidelines, we took on the hapless West Ham at Upton
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Emmanuel Adebayor helped himself to a first half brace, but should have had at least a hat-trick during a game that Tottenham barely had to break a sweat to dominate. In fairness, such was the gulf in quality, we should consider ourselves fortunate to have left with the score only 2-0.
There were rumours before kick off that Alex McLeish intended to field Alan Hutton as a right midfielder and Carlos Cuellar behind him at right back to deal with the
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Remember the Premier League? Yeah, we’re finally back in action tonight for our first league game under the floodlights of 2011/12. Returning to White Hart Lane also happens to be significant for Alex McLeish, but that’s not something we wish to dwell on.
Truth is, coming back from North London with a point has generally been a decent result for us in the past, you’ll do well to find many Villa fans optimistic about grabbing something tonight. Football’s not always predictable
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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
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Marc Albrighton’s first Premiership goal will probably be quickly forgotten after being cancelled out by two goals, one in either half, from Rafael va der Vaart at White Hart Lane today. More of a concern, though, will be how flat Villa looked without Emile Heskey leading the line.
It started off very well, aside from some early home team assertion from Spurs, Villa were soon making their attacking intentions clear and Heskey, in particular, once again looked like a new
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This might seem like an odd question to introduce the statistics from Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Tottenham, but do you remember the 4-4 draw we had at White Hart Lane back in 2007? Of course you do!
Last week I was looking at how Aston Villa have performed based purely on passing over the last couple of seasons and was surprised to find that the 4-4 draw with Spurs contained our least number of passes during a game for the period
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Aston Villa will be heading back up the M40 feeling very sore and not a little grateful to come away from White Hart Lane with a point following a fairly anaemic 0-0 draw with Tottenham. If Spurs are looking for answers about why they failed to capitalise on periods of control, they need only look in the mirror. In truth, a seriously decent side would have gone a couple ahead inside the first 20 minutes.
Despite a very shaky start, the
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