The Arsenal game isn’t until Tuesday, so I thought I might sneak a post in before then.
I’ve just seen a very interesting statistic and while scary, it also provoked me into wondering why it is that we look like we’re going down?
Here’s the stat first;
Goals scored, Premier league only;
Wesley 21 games 5 goals
Kodjia 6 games 0 goals
Davis 16 games 0 goals
Samatta 12 games 1 goal
Vassilev 4 games 0 goals
Baston 0 games 0 goals
A hat-tip goes to “hightrinity” on the Vital forum.
Basically, 6 goals spread between 5 strikers (not counting Baston).
All season!
It’s easy to say then, on the face of it, that there lies the reason we’ve struggled so much.
And of course it’s hard to disagree.
Except, is that really the worst area of our team?
I’m not convinced.
A look at the league says that while our strikers have been abysmal, we’ve (surprisingly to me, at least) outscored seven teams in the league. Amazingly, that includes Sheffield Utd, who sit in 8th place.
So while the attack might have been an issue, lack of goals hasn’t cost us our place in the league.
The defence then and yes, it’s easy to see a corelation here.
We’ve conceded the second highest amount of goals, behind Norwich.
There’s no getting round that at all. Our defence is awful. We’ve all been saying it, all season.
But has that been the single biggest reason we are where we are?
Does all I’ve said up to now leave the Midfield scot-free?
This one’s trickier, to me, at least.
A good midfield should help with attacking and defending.
No less than four midfielders have scored more than Wesley (our top scoring striker) in all competitions. They’re Grealish (9), Hourihane (7), El Ghazi (6) and Trezeguet (6).
What I noticed there was that Hourihane has the best record for minutes per goal and one of the best percentages for shots on target.
That’s interesting, seeing as I don’t rate him at all, so fair play to him.
So while the numbers aren’t staggering, the midfield has at least chipped in.
Which leaves the defensive side of the midfield?
What’s that like?
I have to be honest and say that’s not the area I keep my eye on so much, so I really don’t know.
That said, Luiz has caught my eye recently and you see him getting the ball and advancing nicely at times. But that’s not defending is it?
But it strikes me, that along with our defence being poor, our midfield doesn’t help things.
Who’s our anchor supposed to be? Well, it’s Luiz of late, at least when playing forward. But I’ve never noticed him when defending? Perhaps that’s just me.
Is it Nakamba?
I think he’s been ok at times, but it’s been the minority of games, in my opinion.
Which only leaves John McGinn who could remotely be called a defensive midfielder and that’s pushing it massively. All the others are all more attacking players.
It seems we’re incredibly short in the defensive mid area.
Which indicates to me that Dean Smith realised that and definitely went with a more attacking approach in mind.
There is of course, the other option, in that there is no particular weak area in the side.
In other words, we’re just all-round poor.
Which is where you come in.
I know many of us like a Poll. I do too, so I’m putting one up and will be very interested in the result, as I know what I think.
I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure????
I would add one more to that poll , badger
Dean Smith
For these reasons
Poor training of all areas of the team
Tactically naive for the premiership
Poor game management especially late on in games when ahead
Spot on you can also throw in management coaches and recruitment and the players who put on the Villa kit and we’re not fit to wear it so sell Grealish and Mings keep hold of John McGinn and build the team around him and get Dwight Gayle and get ready for the championship
VTID. AVFC
That Norman been my argument, all down to not able to see weakness (coaches), not picking players that motivated to winning, ( Manager ), and as for our Board of directors where’s your input to the club in General, i.e. seeing the possibility of us going down and giving Smith a long contract.we have people doing a job for the wrong reasons.
Badger, it might have been easier to have done a poll to see what’s right about Villa. It would have been a short list of choices.
Villa fans do love a moan 🙂
Hitch, your not a Villa fan if you don’t moan, the club in general made us fans to moan, not done anything for near on 40 years and bread them to moan.
Why don’t we sack the manager, all his staff, all the coaches, the directors and sell all the players because every single one has been criticised. The owners, of course, aren’t blameless either – so perhaps they should go as well.
Bill like you I’ve been aVillan for a very long time seen managers come and go and why Dean Smith was given a four year contract for saying he supported Villa when he was growing up well he has been one of our worst managers and when we do get rid of him we still go on paying him until his contract ends. Getting paid for taking our beautiful club back the championship and failing to guide us back to Europe. VTID
I see Norman it’s hurting you as me, sometimes you have to make a stand on principles, that Hitch would be stupid to sack the lot wouldn’t it. If you don’t see the writing on the wall as teams play to the extent you end up being a major club that’s going Tits up things need to be said and not burrow your head in the sand. Year after year we have suffered the same problems and Villa still don’t get it right, and yes sack the board first because they should be asking questions, furthermore when fans start to realize and don’t buy tickets and shirts in protesting the fact we are dire then just carry on till we end back in doom land.
Bill – sacking the Board means you are directly criticising the owners – so do you want them to go?
Of course sacking everyone would be stupid – the point I’m trying to make is that is the sum total of the various views posted over the last few weeks. I’m not criticising anyone’s view, I’m just saying we need to stand back and not let our emotions take over.
Just because we have a famous name and a glittering history does not make us any better than any other club, neither does it entitie us to success. It’s an indisputable fact that the vast majority of clubs gaining promotion through the play offs (particularly where that club has made a late run) do not manage to avoid relegation the following year – so it’s not as if we’ve dramatically failed where others have succeeded.
IMHO we are (all) victims off over achieving last season and the club need to continue building for the future, not dismantle everything and start again. The first item on the agenda is persuading our better players to stay with the club and buy into that vision. Whether that requires a change in manager I’m not really sure.
At the end of the day we’ll all have differing opinions but we all want the same thing and that’s success for Aston Villa.
Hitch, I surrender, so we run a business to upset our customers. There is something not right at Villa Park, whether it be Pitchard or whatever his name is , our sports director making bad assumptions on player in or out telling us alls ok.. I feel sorry for fans of today having to suffer the shite players we have had to take on. The thing is you see it I see it Hitch and it’s the same year after year. I know the easy way out is to walk away but not me. I’ll defend my club because I’ve seen the good days and not this shite that’s year after year. I just hope our owners wake up and sort that mess out. .
Final reply in my opinion it was Dean Smith’s fault he mislead the owners into believing he was the right man for the job who’s had no Premiership experience still 6 points left to play for VTID
Then Norman it’s the owners fault not Smith’s,. The owners hire and fire employees like in any business and the ultimate responsibility lies with them.
I think we also forget that Smith was the popular choice of the majority of Villa fans – because he’s a Villa fan or because of the success / brand of football played at Brentford – you decide!?
Now there are arguments that Smith wasn’t the reason for Brentford’s success because they are doing better without him. Well, maybe that’s right – I don’t know – but by and large it’s still the same team that Smith put together, Ron Saunders said, when he left Villa, ‘this team will continue playing well together for 12 months because of what I drilled into them ….’ OK that might be a précis but it’s the right sentiment.
Personally, I believe Smith didn’t get the signings he wanted because of the DOF / transfer committee approach which failed before and will fail again. I can’t see the likes of Klopp, Guardiola or Mourinho ceding control of transfers in that way.
So it comes back to the owners along with Purslow re thinking how the club should be run.
brentford have been playing a similar way for years. mark warburton started the ground work i believe in league 1. smith added to that when he took charge and the guy who followed smith has took them on again.
villa have had managers with opposite styles and ideas, so every time we change, its always back to the beginning. changing players with every new manager has got us in a right pickle with money owed too.
we need to build like sheff utd and brentford and stop chasing our tails and dreams. cause without the hard work we will never achieve much and if we do it wont last.
Agreed.
Bloody typical that Arsenal,who were awful in the first couple of games after the restart, are now bang in form. They also still have something to play for so, if it wasn’t difficult enough before, it certainly is now. There is still hope though.
El Ghazi’s indefensible miss against Everton looks like being extremely costly.
If I,or anyone else had made that type of error in their respective occupation, they would probably be given a written warning.
i liked the poll too badger, but the possible reason we are dog sh it is none of the above, its not one reason or two its everything. better players like hitch alluded too would most certainly have helped. these players have been thrown together too quickly to stand any chance of being a good team. then mistakes by players and officials cost us dearly. goalie defenders midfield and attackers not one department is solely too blame, its the whole group of individuals which failed to be moulded into a team.
i do not blame the management too, cause teams take more than a few weeks or months to develop. more like a fine wine that gets better with time to mature. i notice lately we are coping more playing better teams, compared with earlier in season. every club we face has had better individuals or better team efficacy so our players have been under pressure every second of every game. that is the reason for the mistakes.
i agree with hitch, players we had recruited, all had too prove they are premiership quality individuals , as well as gel into a premiership quality team. that was just too much to ask in such a short time. even if we had bough better quality, you still need time to mould this into a efficient team. plus you do all this in such a short period and then they play teams week in and out who are all better individually & better team efficacy, confidence has drained from our players now facing this every week.
finally i watched arsenal last night, i would like to retract the pansies statement i made other day. lol they might not be Wimbledon (crazy gang ) but they looked solid to me. will be tough old game Tuesday
It was understandable that when the likes of Hutton, Chester, Whelan, Jedinak, Tuanzebe and Abraham left, we would need to bring in a lot of players purely to make up the numbers.
We all have opinions on the failure of our recruitment. Maybe the players are capable of succeeding at the top level but our coaching is inadequate to get the best out of them. What’s the likelihood that most will move on to forge successful careers elsewhere, like so many players who have left us in the past.
The other possibility is that the recruitment has seen us inherit a bunch of championship level players. After all, if you spend £140m on Heaton, Guilbert, Targett, Konsa, Hause, Mings, Nakamba, Luiz, Trezeguet, Jota, El Ghazi, Wesley, Samatta excluding loans! That is approximately £10.5m average per player. Realistically that amount is way below what is paid in today’s market for premier league level.
Purslow wanted us to recruit young and hungry with a profitable outgoing resale value. The problem with that was the likes of Hutton, Whelan, Jedinak and Chester, all of them leaders with premier league experience was not replaced. This in my opinion is what ultimately has cost us. Without them we have become too nice, too naive and a soft touch.
So going back to Badgers poll, I don’t think we can blame things on one thing. It’s many bad decisions but mostly on recruitment, and who is responsible for this? Suso? Suso and Smith? Purslow?
Holte I have to agree with much of that. I think the biggest mistake made was not retaining some of our experienced players and bringing in fewer but better quality replacements. I’m not sure about Hutton but I firmly believe the experience of Chester, Whelan and Jedinak would have stood us in good stead.
Nath makes a good point – we continually try and change too much too quickly and this has been going on for a number of years – certainly since a certain Irishman threw his toys out of the pram.
However, we are where we are and have to build on what we have – that means doing everything to hold onto the better or most promising players at the club albeit accepting that we may well have to sell one or two to deal with FFP.
Throwing all the babies out with the bath water puts us back to square one.
And yes I would keep Smith and Kelley but move JT on. I would also look very closely at the level of influence Suso and Purslow have in transfers and also our transfer strategy. Smith should be in absolute control of who we sell and who we sign.
Apologies for the diatribe 🙂
What do people make of Watford sacking Pearson with 2games to go, good or bad news for villa?
That’s a very interesting result up to now, with attack and defence both equally on top.
I voted for all of it, because that’s what I think. We’re just not good enough all round.
And then I thought about it some more, which led me to thinking that we’ve scored enough goals to survive.
Hence, while the attack has been crap, it’s not what will see us going down.
The defence however is a different story. We’ve the second worst in the league and where do we currently sit?
That’s no coincidence to me and it has to be the ultimate cause.
We’ve taken the lead so many times, only to concede = defence
We’ve conceded most goals in the last 15 minutes = defence
Much of this can be put down to our tending to sit back after taking a lead, which is probably an all round problem, tbf.
I’ve often said that I don’t believe Smith tells the team to sit back, but one thing occurred to me against Everton;
Why don’t we ever see Smith going ballistic, kicking all sorts up and down the touchline and calling the players all sorts when we concede yet another late goal?
I’m sure if I was him, I’d be going absolutely apesh*t.
I’ve read all the comments and come to the conclusion that we should keep Smith, Kelly and our best players telling the vultures of the premier League to do one. Let’s see if these players come good with us rather than anyone else.
Get rid Terry and suso. Go the way Brentford do it. Yes they are better after Smith but is it because they’re now a team that’s been together for a couple of years and remember Smith was in charge when the players joined. He also wanted a couple of the players but someone wanted cheaper one’s if only they had spent another£20m on one of them I think we would be safe, even another 3goals and we’d be safe, that’s how close we came 3bloody goals!!!!! But let’s keep everyone together and build a team.(apart from Terry and suso of course)back to the late 70s and early 80s utv come on
Not enough prem experience, lack of a proven goalscorer and key injuries at key times.
Badger i have been saying that about Smith all season to my wife when i am going ape sh*t at the tv and he is standing there with his arms folded, and the other day when El Ghazzi cleared it off the line i was going mental, if he had left it it would have gone in, and if he touches it correctly it goes in and he gets thousands of pounds per week for that, if i had been Smith i would have dragged him off by his hair and kicked the sh*t out of him, but smith just carried on calmly.
Its OK JUST TAKEN A VALIUM
calm now.
which is why i think Smith should go amongst other things.
watch the man utd chelsea semi final
see how these two play without the ball, not attacking or defedning. just watch the team without the ball, see how they press the ball.all the premiership teams are much better than us at closing the ball down as a team.
so i would say this is another major reason why we struggled. we do close down and got better as the season went on. but we do not close the ball down well. we go in ones and twos mostly in ones. but chelsea and utd are going in 4 and 5 and much higher
watford sacked pearson lmao
That that’s ridiculous – if Watford stay up it will be one of the biggest ever injustices in football – and I don’t even like the bloke. Actually I now hope they get relegated – would serve them right!
What a farce – just goes to show how low football has sunk.
Sacking Pearson is a shocking decision. Watford looked dead and buried before he was appointed. Now they are on the brink of survival! Smith must be thinking how lucky he is to still be in a job when you compare his record to Pearson.
watford decision is shocking and a real kick in the teeth to a guy who basically kept them up. i remember them sacking managers like ppl change their socks. but that seems to suit them. but believe me that is not normal and i hope we can get 4 points from last two. they do not deserve to be top league acting un professional.
sacking with one game left is crazy, its more a statement of their unsatisfactory but made publically like shaming pearson for his hard work. their players are more likely to revolt than back the board.