The Villa Game: It was more than JUST a performance, more than JUST a result.....

There were clear patterns of play and tactical understanding.

Good Afternoon Ladies and Gents,

Today I am going to review the Aston Villa game and explain why this was MORE than just a one off performance and how A LOT of what happened during this game does not come overnight it is months and months of work and tactical understanding.

I am re-watching the entire game as I type this and review.

Shape;

So the first thing to discuss was our set-up, we set up in a combined 4-2-3-1 / 4-4-2 formation with Cole Palmer as the main centre forward and Conor Gallagher a little behind him. We pressed in 4-4-2 shape and constantly shifted to wherever Villa played the ball.

The shape was solid and the pressing was effective from minute 1, we set out with a game plan that the players put into motion instantly. We were aggressive with our press and constantly in their faces, every player showed good aggression and the ability to press effectively.

I noticed from attacking set pieces, predominantly corners our set up changed slightly, usually you would see Gallagher floating towards the front edge of the box, taking them or going short. He was left about 5-10 yards outside of the penalty area and on 2/3 occasions stopped promising Villa counter attacks from set pieces by winning the ball.

We are prone to being countered on from set-pieces and this was an intelligent way to stop that.

This was the most impressive part for me (image below), alongside the tactical bits that had clearly been months in practice, was the hunger, the determination and desire to win the ball back. The players made a point and that point was clear…… WE like our manager and WE are playing for him and the badge.

This is directly after Enzo’s goal to take us 3-0 up, every player is pressing, in shape and ready to pounce, bottom left is Axel Disasi, the centre back………

Patterns;

An example of players communicating and initiating a trigger, here is Jackson telling Gallagher to change the angle of his press in order to force Villa to play wide, Conor does that and we win the ball back and earn a corner.

I want to highlight Enzo’s awareness and the fact that multiple players were informing their teammates of where they need to be to build up in a pattern. This is just one example.

Here I have highlighted Enzo who quickly looked over his shoulder and as Caicedo was drifting in towards the ball he told him to stop and maintain his position.

With one pass this then allows Caicedo to receive the ball, turn, and take 3 Villa players out of the game (image below). We create a half chance from this attack, going from Badiashile to the half chance in 10 seconds. That is a pattern that has clearly been worked upon and needed to be orchestrated by Enzo without him even touching the ball.

When our CB’s were split wide apart but had the ball our shape seemed to change slightly in midfield alone, we’re used to seeing our centre backs be very close together to assist with a lack of pace which limits build up play and the pace of it at times. But also, this usually stops the likes of Enzo or Caicedo dropping in to pick the ball up and allowing the other to create not only a gap between themselves but usually a gap in the oppositions midfield.

Here you see Caicedo drop deep receive the ball from Disasi, turn and has two options between the lines, he plays a bounce pass with Gallagher then passes out to Badiashile who plays a quick bass into Jackson, who briefly loses the ball before we end up scoring from this very attack. My point is how quickly this allows us to get up the field. This is clearly something we have worked on and been building up to in training.

For the second goal we built up in a similar way, but this time Badiashile had the ball, Enzo managed to find a gap from his marker which enabled him to play a first time pass across to Disasi which catapulted us up the pitch and on to the attack, Enzo was the trigger. Something we are starting to see, one player will trigger the attack and the rest will follow suit.

Enzo’s pass took 4 Villa players out of the game and left Disasi, Gusto & Madueke with an overload down that side.

A third and final time I will show you this pattern, again with Caicedo dropping in to pick the ball up and having two passing lanes to break the line, he choses Enzo who again notices a fraction of time he has and is able to play a first time pass 50-60 yards over to Gusto and in behind the Villa full back.

The reason we were doing this is two-fold, firstly it draws 3-4 players in every time, so once you bypass them you can attack with pace and with players out of position, it also gives us defensive stability if we are to lose the ball.

We saw a lot less sideways passing and a lot more forward passing during this game and that is because of the way we are building up with the ball and our shape off of it. It takes a lot of time to understand and implement patterns of play and to get confident with them, it shows that our players are STARTING to understand and implement the ways we are training.

Width;

Something we have been missing a lot this season is natural width, generally produced by having natural full backs, which due to injury it has been very rare to have 2 or even 1 natural full back on the pitch during games, our wingers all naturally invert and come inside, this leaves a lot of spaces and gaps for creation in wide areas but also will allow us to flood the box and get bodies in to the opposition box more.

On this attack we had 5 players in the penalty area at one time, that’s been a rarity this season and something you need to pin the opposition back but also to enhance the chances of loose balls or deflected passes falling to your players.

Having the full backs creating width stretches the oppositions defence and allows wingers/wide forwards to make runs in between full back and centre back, something that Jackson did frequently, this gives the passer a short option but also a channel ball.

It drags the centre backs apart and allows attacking midfielders or late runners to drift into the box unmarked and with loads of space.

We attacked well with numbers, constantly pushing up the pitch, there was a natural urge to fil each others positions which I haven’t really seen us have recently. This attack drive by Madueke was interesting as Jackson inverted and darted between centre half and full back, you have palmer and then Gallagher busting through the middle and then Enzo taking up Jackson's position to maintain the width in the attack.

We end up with all 5 players in the box and when Madueke starts to invert Jackson overlaps him, again to maintain width and options. 5 players in the box again.

Summary;

A lot of this does not happen overnight and especially in such a short turn around from that awful defeat to Wolves. It makes it easier for us to understand that these things have been worked on for a while and the players are starting to feel comfortable with our set-up, patterns and much more. This performance albeit felt like the finished article actually was far from perfect and merely the start of actually seeing the training ground work paying off.

We will still have poor performances and results like Wolves as it is still so early days but this will give Poch, the players and everyone around the club the confidence they need and show that we are improving, it will never be a straight road to improvement it will be more of a rollercoaster.

The more confidence we gain and good performances we show the more consistent the team will get.

Don’t expect to see a performance like this week in week out but we now know we are capable of it which is something I wasn’t aware of before this game, once that consistency comes we could be dangerous with those extra bits of quality and leadership we require.

Questions;

Did we all overreact on Poch?

Does it seem like an overreaction in hindsight?

Has this performance and evidence of what we are learning day in day out bought Poch more time?

Do we all just need to accept that we are a young team that are learning and with that comes inconsistencies and fluctuation in confidence?

Please ponder all of the questions above and answer them in the comments if you wish

Thank you all for reading

Luke Rushbrook