Aston Villa: A Half-Season Analysis

It has been a season of mixed emotions thus far for Villa fans. The club’s best start in many years was followed by a dismal run of defeats and the longest scoring drought in Premier League history, followed by a run of just one defeat in seven games, most recently leading to a point against Manchester United, our biggest bogey team.

This article will look in a little more detail at some of the statistics behind the results that see Villa in 12^th position in the Premier League table going into Christmas.

The aspect that has been the most worrying for Villa this season has been scoring goals. As the table below shows, Villa have scored the fewest goals in the Premier League this season:

Statistic	Value	Premier League Rank
Goals For	10	20th
Total Shots For	153	19th
Shots on Target For	44	19th
Shots per Goal For	15.3	19th
Shots on Target per Goal For	4.4	20th

The lack of shots and shots on target is just as concerning. Only Hull have created fewer chances this season as Villa and the shots per goal scored shows that Villa are failing to convert the relatively few chances that they are actually creating.

Let us look into more detail as to how Villa’s shots are being created and see whether that can explain the poor conversion rate.

As some background, this article from Colin Trainor suggests that there is a reasonably strong correlation between speed of attack and conversion rates. The faster the attack from a team, the greater the conversion rate of the shots that are generated from those attacks.

Michael Caley has compiled some very useful statistics here that we can use to look into more detail at Villa’s attacking ability. Interestingly, we can see that 25.0% of Villa’s shots this season have come about as a result of a fast attack. While this tallies well with our idea of Villa as an attacking team, it would suggest that the expected conversion rate for Villa this season should be fairly high. Instead, we can see that Villa require more shots on target per goal than any other team.

Villa’s 43.4% of shots from the ‘danger zone’, where the greatest chance of scoring comes from, again suggests that Villa should be creating relatively high value chances. This is 3^rd highest of all the teams in the Premier League.

So, the chances that are being created are from quick counter-attacks and in the most dangerous areas. The fact that these chances are not being converted raises questions about the strikers themselves. The fact that Christian Benteke has played just 625 minutes this season through injury and suspension has not helped matters, but now that he is back and playing well, might we see more of these chances being converted?

The return of Christian Benteke to full fitness should be a huge boost to Villa's attacking abilities

Interestingly, out of the three most attacking players (Agbonlahor, Weimann and Benteke), it is Christian Benteke that has required the most shots per goal this season. His two goals have come from 19 shots, while Andreas Weimann has required 6.0 shots per goal and Agbonlahor 5.67. Whether this reflects a difference in the type of shots that each player is taking (e.g. Benteke with more headed attempts) or whether it is just taking Benteke a few matches to fully get back up to speed remains to be seen.

The other major concern amongst the fans is a lack of creativity in the midfield. The lack of a traditional ‘number ten’ has been flagged up for many years now, but seems not to have been addressed yet.

A ‘key pass’ is a pass that leads to a shot on goal. If we look at Villa’s players this season, we can see that there are no players that really stand out as regularly creating chances. Of the regular starters, Ashley Westwood has the most key passes per 90 minutes with 1.06, followed by Charles N’Zogbia (0.85), Andreas Weimann (0.79) and Tom Cleverley (0.79). Joe Cole has been restricted to just 105 minutes this season due to injury, but his 4 key passes during that time (3.43 per 90 minutes) shows that he could have the potential to be the creative player that Villa desperately need, if only he is able to stay fit.

One player that has been missed in recent weeks is Fabian Delph. He has shown in the past year or so that he has developed into a very good midfield player. However, the aspect of his play that Villa have most missed in his absence is his ability to beat a man with the ball. His 2.59 successful dribbles per 90 is over double what any other Villa player has achieved this season and it is an important tool in terms of starting attacking moves. By taking it past a player, he is able to drive into space, commit other defenders and free up his teammates. Without him, it has been tough for Villa to create space for their attacking players simply by looking to pass the ball around.

While the midfielders may be very similar, they are all very comfortable on the ball. The top four players in terms of passes per 90 are Westwood, Sanchez, Cleverley and Delph, all with completion rates of over 80%. Slightly surprisingly, it is Ashley Westwood that has the lowest completion rate at 80.8%, although this could be due to the fact that he is the midfielder that most looks to play the cutting ball through the opposition defence. Tom Cleverley has been accused at times of playing the simple ball and not looking to create more, and it is Cleverley that has the highest completion rate at 87.3%.

Once again, Jores Okore shows up very favourably here. His pass completion rate of 86.4% is second only behind Tom Cleverley and his long ball completion rate is comfortably the highest of all the defenders.

The season started so promisingly for Aston Villa in defence. Three clean sheets in the opening four games suggested that the defensive problems of the past might be behind them. However, once the fixtures became tougher, some of the defensive frailties returned. Despite that, there are promising signs for the worst defence last season of the teams that avoided relegation. The table below shows some of the statistics:

Statistic	Value	Premier League Rank
Goals Against	20	8th
Total Shots Against	234	15th
Shots on Target Against	72	15th
Shots per Goal Against	11.7	4th
Shots on Target per Goal Against	3.6	3rd
Clean Sheets	5	6th

We can see that Villa’s 20 goals conceded puts them 8^th in terms of the best defences in the Premier League. The five clean sheets also puts them joint sixth overall. However, what is interesting is that Villa are 15^th in terms of shots against and shots on target against. They are conceding plenty of shots, but for some reason, they are not conceding many goals. Let us look further at why this may be the case.

Using Michael Caley’s statistics from earlier, we can look into where the shots that Aston Villa have conceded have come from. We can see that 34.2% of the shots that Villa have faced have come from slow attacking moves, which should have the lowest conversion rates. This is the highest percentage of any team in the Premier League this season and helps to explain why teams seem to have such a poor conversion rate against Villa. Just 13.3% of shots come from fast attacks, which is the 7^th lowest value in the Premier League this season. This is almost certainly a product of Villa’s style of play, which involves plenty of sitting deep and looking to break quickly. Against a team sitting deep and defending, it is tough for opposition teams to generate quick attacks.

One slightly worrying statistic though is that 40.0% of the shots that Villa have faced this season have come from inside the ‘danger zone’. This is the 6^th highest in the Premier League, although if we combine this with the reasonably high proportion of shots in the danger area that are coming from crosses (52.3% - 2^nd highest in the Premier League), it would seem that plenty of opposition chances are coming from headers from crosses being put into the box. If you are to concede chances in the danger area, it is probably preferable that these come from headers, rather than chances with the ball at the feet of an attacker. The 40.9% of shots against from outside the penalty area for Villa this season is 15^th in the Premier League.

Combining all this information, it would seem that the chances that Villa are conceding this season are coming at the end of a slow passing move from the opposition, either from a cross into the box or from working the ball into a crowded penalty area and trying to get the shot off. This deep defensive tactic leads to plenty of chances being conceded, but not too many of those are clear cut chances for the opposition.

Let us now look at which players are most involved in defensive actions. The two obvious defensive actions that are recorded are tackles and interceptions. Both involve taking the ball off of the opposition team and recording a turnover of possession.

To begin with, let us combine the two actions in a single statistic – tackles and interceptions per 90 minutes (T&I/90). Matthew Lowton currently leads this for Villa with 5.48, followed by Jores Okore (4.83), Tom Cleverley (4.12), Alan Hutton (4.08) and Carlos Sanchez (3.73). In terms of the other defenders, we have Ciaran Clark (3.32), Aly Cissokho (2.94), Nathan Baker (2.80), Ron Vlaar (2.58) and Philippe Senderos (1.71). For the other midfielders, we have Ashley Westwood (2.71), Fabian Delph (2.24) and Kieron Richardson (1.56).

So, if we break this down, can we see differences in how players defend? Looking at the midfield, we can see that both Tom Cleverley (2.85 v 1.27) and Carlos Sanchez (2.16 v 1.57) show more tackles than interceptions, while Ashley Westwood (0.98 v 1.73) is the opposite. This would seem to fit in with the common perception that Westwood is the more intelligent footballers that is able to step in and intercept balls, but who maybe does not get stuck in as much as might be hoped in the middle of the pitch. Tom Cleverley’s 2.85 tackles per 90 is actually the highest of any Villa player this season, which shows a side of his game that might not have been immediately recognised – his ability to win the ball back and get stuck in.

Looking at the central defenders, all five of the players that have been used there this season show more interceptions than tackles. This makes sense given that it is a risk for players to go in for tackles when the opposition is closing on the penalty area. In midfield, you can take the risk of stepping in and trying to win the ball back as there are players behind you to cover. In defence, you often do not have that luxury. This also reflects that, given how deep Villa tend to defend, the midfielders are often required to do a lot of the tackling to keep the opposition at arm’s length, while the defenders are there to intercept any balls that are played in behind the midfield.

Jores Okore has been a revelation since he broke into the first team just over a month ago

Jores Okore’s 2.83 interceptions per 90 is currently the highest of any Villa player and, despite only playing six matches thus far, there are only three players that have made more interceptions in total. He has been excellent at reading the game and stepping up to block passes and win the ball back. His 2.00 tackles per 90 is also the highest of any of the central defenders showing how good he has been since he was thrown in due to injuries to Vlaar, Senderos and Baker.

Going forward, it is clear that the system this season is working relatively well in terms of limiting high-quality chances for the opposition, but that creating chances, and more importantly, converting those chances has been an issue. This season, Christian Benteke will be integral to this and, as he gets closer to full sharpness, this may well improve. In defence, Jores Okore is rapidly becoming Villa’s classiest defender and hanging onto him for as long as possible should be one of the top priorities in the coming years. His emergence should mean that the club can cope with the loss of Ron Vlaar in the summer, as Philippe Senderos and Nathan Baker are decent back-up players to the partnership of Clark and Okore, which has really blossomed in recent weeks.

If Joe Cole can stay fit, he could play a major role in creating chances for Benteke, but there is still a clear need for a creative midfielder to complement the solid foundation that Sanchez, Cleverley and Westwood can provide. Fabian Delph provides something different from those three, although it seems ever more likely that he will be departing the club at the end of the season.

The coming summer should be an interesting one for Aston Villa. With the reasonable likelihood that Christan Benteke, Ron Vlaar and Fabian Delph could all be departing, there will be considerable onus on Paul Lambert to use the available funds effectively. Thus far, he has rarely been given funds to spend, but when he has spent slightly more on players, it has been relatively successful. Christian Benteke has been an outstanding signing, while Carlos Sanchez and Jores Okore are looking to be very decent players. Aly Cissokho looks to be a solid defender for the price, while Libor Kozak was showing promising signs before his injury problems.

How any proceeds from the sale of Christian Benteke, plus any additional funds that may be made available now the club is in a more secure financial state, are spent this coming summer could shape the future of Aston Villa. Assuming Villa stay up this season, it has the potential to be a pivotal summer.

Analysing a Tennis Article

While there are plenty of very good tennis writers putting their thoughts onto paper, there are also plenty of other articles that seem to get disseminated that are simply nonsense. Whether they are meant to be written in that form to generate hits and discussion or whether the writer truly believes what he is writing is not always clear, but the quantity of nonsense that comes from certain writers does make me wonder at times.

The IPTL has split opinions, but the local crowds have been getting into it

As an exercise, I am going to look at one of these articles and try and break it down to see whether the arguments and statements are actually sensible or whether it really is nonsense. As some of you may have gathered from my Twitter feed, I have been following the new IPTL tournament closely for various reasons – both professional and personal. The article that I will look at is this one, entitled ‘The International Premier Tennis Leaguehas no future, hopefully.’ It is published on GiveMeSport by Harry Wall, their lead writer.

“Sadly, the chance to see legends play again is the only thing great about this new monstrosity. Sky Sports have taken a gamble by airing the matches but perhaps, hopefully, they'll decide to opt out next year given the chance.”

Even if we had not gathered from the headline, we are told very quickly that he is not a fan of this new event. Apart from the chance to see the legends, he is clearly not enjoying the tournament. As he correctly states, Sky Sports have picked up the event, which is excellent for fans, who will have the opportunity to see for themselves as to how the new event works. I am not entirely sure why, at this point in time, they would consider dropping it. If it continues, you would imagine that Sky Sports would renew their contract, if only to stop BT Sport or Eurosport picking up the event. People will watch tennis on TV if it is on and of a decent quality. With a host of top 20 singles players, some high quality doubles and legendary names from the past, that is enough to attract casual viewers. At the time of day that it is on, it is quite likely one of Sky Sports most viewed programmes given that it is one of the few live events at that time of the day.

“I don't wish to sound rigid, miserable or negative but come on, this is complete and utter garbage. It's like a tennis tournament made for Fisher Price; an easy to understand, fun and interactive experience for the kiddies.”

With statements like that, how could he possibly sound negative? Surely there is no way that calling something ‘complete and utter garbage’ could be construed in a negative way? Besides, given the general confusion amongst players, officials and viewers alike, it seems that ‘easy to understand’ is about as far from the truth as possible.

“Nightclub music (to which some players embarrassingly bounce along to), flashing lights, shot-clock timers, team fist-bumps between points and the pathetic franchise names - it all reeks of a utter sham designed to make money.”

I can see why some purists may dislike the music and lights. To spectators watching on TV, it probably does not add a great deal. However, it surely improves the atmosphere for the spectators that are actually at the event. It gets them involved and it creates a visual and auditory spectacle during the normal downtime during matches. Furthermore, I don’t see what the problem with players getting involved with the music is. Would he rather they all sat quietly with their heads bowed?

Are naming the franchises really harming anyone? In a team event, the teams have to be called something surely. Why not give them names beyond just the name of the city? Maybe the sponsor names added to the franchise names sounds a little ridiculous, but the money has to come from somewhere and sponsorship is becoming a bigger deal in all sports, not just tennis. Nobody complains about the BNP Paribas Masters, so what is wrong with the Micromax Indian Aces? Simply through the sponsorship, the company is going to advert the event just to get their names out there. Further publicity for the tournament cannot be a bad thing.

Finally, at the end of the day, is something designed to make money a bad thing? With the tournaments that are being cancelled due to lack of money and sponsorship, why is making money seen as a bad thing?

“The organisers claim that this will be the future of tennis”

Of course the organisers are going to claim that. It would hardly be advertising their tournament to say that it was just a pointless exhibition with a modified set of rules. Just because they say this does not mean that it is true.

“Why exactly does tennis need to change its future anyway? - I wasn't aware there was anything wrong with the present.”

Does tennis need a radical overhaul for the future? Of course not. Is there scope for tennis to evolve, both in a sporting and a commercial sense? Of course there is. Sports must evolve over time to remain relevant in an ever more competitive marketplace. Tennis, in terms of attracting spectators and fans, is not only competing against other sports, but other activities full-stop. For some people, watching tennis, whether on TV or live at the event, will be seen as a substitute for going to watch a football match. For others, it may be for watching a film or an episode of their favourite TV show.

“However, tennis doesn't face issues of declining interest, lack of excitement or money woes. I tried to find tickets for Wimbledon and the ATP World Tour Finals in London this year, unsuccessfully. Take a look at prices and availability - you'll see tennis as a sport is in good health on its own.”

This section is simply untrue is parts. In the past month, the Oeiras WTA tournament has been cancelled, while the ATP version is in serious doubt. While not officially confirmed, the Valencia ATP event that Andy Murray won in October is expected to have been the final edition of the event. In recent years, the Belgrade ATP event has disappeared, Dusseldorf has lost its ATP event after just two editions. All of these tournaments have disappeared for financial reasons stemming from lack of sponsorship and big financial losses in recent years.

When we watch many tournaments around the world during the ATP and WTA season, we cannot help but be struck by the empty seats on view. While the Grand Slams are usually packed out on the main courts, the majority of tournaments below that level struggle to fill their stands.

Wimbledon regularly sells out, but that is far from the case at other tournaments

Using Wimbledon and the ATP World Tour Finals in London as examples are fairly ridiculous. Tennis tournaments in England tend to be an exception to the rule. Main court tickets at Wimbledon are generally only available through a very oversubscribed ballot, while there are huge queues for ground passes. Tickets for the ATP event at Queen’s are allocated via a ballot, while the ATP World Tour Finals have been virtually sold out for every session since it came to London. Put simply, the British public, partially driven by the Andy Murray effect, love watching live tennis and will pay high prices for tickets to do so.

Outside of the UK, the situation is often very different. Tickets for the Rome Masters are cheap and it is not difficult to buy them, even on the day itself. I have been to the old WTA event in Marbella and the joint ATP/WTA event in Sydney and bought tickets on the day for the main court with no problems. The courts were even fairly empty for both of them.

Is there declining interest in tennis? Probably not. Certainly not in the UK, but I cannot say for sure about other countries. I would imagine not in most countries. Possibly in the USA given the lack of high-profile Grand Slam contenders outside of Serena Williams. Does the lack of declining interest mean that tennis should not try to continue appealing to new fans? Of course not.

“Do you find tennis boring? Did you find the Wimbledon final boring this year? Have you found the Grand Slam finals between Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic boring in recent years? Do you find the battle for world no.1 boring?”

If you simply find tennis boring, it is unlikely that any innovations or changes will attract you to the sport. Was the Wimbledon final boring this year? Of course not. It certainly was not the greatest final in recent times – the only reason it went five sets was Djokovic choking at critical moments – but it was an enjoyable match. Of course the Grand Slam finals between three of the greatest players to ever play the game have not been boring. The battle for world number 1 is not boring. However, surely tennis exists outside of the top 3 players?

Tennis has been blessed in recent years to have had three such outstanding players. For the ATP, it has been a golden generation. However, this will not continue forever. Even the evergreen Roger Federer will surely have to call it a day in the next few years. We do not know how long Rafael Nadal’s ever more brittle body will hold up to the strain of a full schedule.

These stars will be replaced. The cycle will go on. But the next generation may not live up to the standards set by the current superstars of the game. The sport as a whole has to be positioned to be able to cope with this. To decide whether a sport is boring based on matches between some of the greatest players to ever pick up a racquet is ridiculous. You may as well ask whether watching Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona playing football is boring. Of course not, but not every match has one of those players.

“Tennis is a sport which is doing just fine. I'm sure the players will agree. The likes of Federer, Nadal and Maria Sharapova are all pushing 15 million fans on Facebook. 15 million! That figure is in-line with most top-end footballers and football clubs, and nobody is calling for clubbing music or fireworks between substitutions in the Premier League....”

I am fairly sure that the player seem to be thoroughly enjoying their time at the IPTL. Obviously, the appearance money will undoubtedly be helping, but they do seem to be enjoying the camaraderie of the team format, the crowds are getting behind them and there is no sign that the players are not enjoying it. Will all professional tennis players agree that the sport is doing just fine? Almost certainly not. Plenty of players from top 50-100 players all the way down have brought up the issue of money being disproportionately weighted toward the top players, who arguably need the money the least.

Federer, Nadal and Sharapova have roughly the same number of Facebook fans as top-end footballers? Not quite sure what that has to do with anything. And I am pretty certain that there is now music that accompanies goals at the majority of grounds, music before the match, at half-time and after the match, half-time entertainment and cheerleaders at some matches. There are fireworks after big finals at matches as well. That argument seems fairly moot.