Ratings and Reactions: Villa 1-1 Swansea

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We played ok for 20 mins.  There was a plan and it was press high up the pitch and stop them from playing. It worked well, they were rushing long passes up the pitch into 50 50 contests and it created a goal for us when we won the ball very high up the pitch.   I can pretty much pinpoint the moment where our game plan went to hell.  On 20 minutes one of their center backs got the ball on the edge of his own box and started jogging up the middle of the pitch.  Gabby and Andreas were stood not 15 yards apart and the defender just strolled through the middle of them to the half way line without a sniff of a challenge.  It wasn't just the confidence that went away, you could see that the midfield stopped trusting the forwards to do their job of closing down.  Instead of pressing in the Swansea half we started defending 10 yards into our own half.  This let Swansea right back into the game, allowing them to do what they do best and pass pass pass, with limited pressure on the ball.  Almost everyone was guilty of letting a runner go at some point, which by default means that either another defender has to be pulled out of position to cover, or we leave a man free in a dangerous position.

 

I do not think this is so much a fault of the effort put in, it is a part of a wider malaise.  We gave the ball away consistently throughout the whole game.  The stats don't lie, on average after 2 passes it is odds on that Swansea would have the ball back.  This means we are spending the majority of the game chasing the ball.  Even after 20 mins I can see why after Gabby and Andreas had been doing 30 yard shuttle runs and full pelt pretty much without pause closing down the defense, they would simultaneously let the other do the closing down. 

 

Equally the unbelievably bad passing is not just about poor technique (although there was some pretty shocking simple passing that went wrong), but it is also about a lack of options.  Without the ball we buzzed about, with the ball we stood like statues.  I remember one point in the second half, Bacuna had the ball in our on half, very central and under only a little bit of pressure.  He held the ball and looked up to see 2 banks of 4 stood there looking at him, not a man jack of them running past him.  They didn't even move, they just stood and waited for the inevitable as he got closed down and lost the ball without a single opportunity to pass the ball to a team mate.  This is the bit that confuses me the most.  Deep in his own half with team mates all around him, Bacuna did not have a single simple pass available to him.  I don't think that there is a single person on this board that does not know that you have to move off the ball.  they must know it too, so why is it not happening?   

 

For me it is a confidence issue.  They don't seem to trust each other to control or pass the pall successfully so would rather stay in place rather than take a risk and be out of position should the pass go astray.  With each time the ball is cheaply given away the players seem to go deeper and deeper into their shells becoming more risk averse with each moment.  There is a law of diminishing returns here that result in stats like 24% possession.

 

There was another moment that stood out in the second half.  There was yet another hurried and scuffed clearance out of the Villa defence.  It looped to Westwood more by luck than judgement, who took it down with a lovely touch then on the half turn played an accurate pass between center back and full back to release the right wing (I think it was AW) with acres of space to run into.  The move came to nothing as the cross was poor, but it served as a reminder that each and every one of the Villa players on that pitch is capable of better than they served up that day.  Nothing Westwood did in that moment was exceptional.  It was a good first touch, but he was under little pressure and at this level you should be able to kill a ball like that.  Equally the pass, whilst well weighted and directed was played in to a big gap and had a wide margin of error.  Simple control, simple movement and a simple pass.  It should be the bread and butter of any team, but it stood out in this performance because of the scarcity of the provision of the basics of the game.

I have been deeply disappointed by the last few performances, it is a standard that deserves to be relegated.  Equally I was overjoyed with how we played against Arsenal and Chelsea at the start of the year.  We can do better, we have done better and we will do better again.

Pretty much agree with all of this, but would like to add to the lack of movement when we have a throw in. It is appalling and you just have the feeling we're going to lose the ball when we have one.

 

Again probably down to the lack of confidence.