Summarise the Season - 21/22

[Jareth]

"The season we had to start over again" 

[VillaChris]

13 hours ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Yea another season of Transition, it's always the same with Villa.

Looking at the table fourteenth is bad however if we had won against Watford twice and picked up a draw against Brentford we would have finished eighth.

All ifs and buts though.

All teams who finished above us can say that. Brighton drew 0-0 against Norwich twice (Potter out) and also errr lost twice to us (Potter out). Still finished 6 points clear of us playing some really good football again (Potter for next England manager).

14th is really disappointing finish for me, look at table after we beat Leeds away in mid March and it can't be described as anything but disapppointing we finished bottom 7 and quite a bit off top half in the end.

[bannedfromHandV]

I think this season was always going to be difficult given the post-Grealish hangover. I don’t think any of us could have envisaged it being so bad that it would lead to losing Smith too.

Going back to those days after the Grealish saga resolved itself and the public announcement from Purslow - that statement felt odd to me, saying that we were replacing Grealish with Bailey, Ings and Buendia just made no real sense, it felt very ‘moneyball-esque’ but the basic fact was that we could not replace one player with three, the math just doesn’t work.

So a big transitional season for us, we’ve blown hot and cold under Gerrard, I think we’re definitely still lacking an identity but I think that could be said of us under Smith (and previous managers) too, hopefully Gerrard can imprint a genuine personality on the team.

Despite it being a tough year I feel that our profile has increased, signing quality players like Digne, Coutinho and now Kamara may be the start of something big here, or we could end up like Everton in a few years’ time with overpaid and overrated players weighing us down, fingers crossed.

I think if I’m scoring the season purely on results and league finish then it’s a 4/10 season but our raised profile is interesting.

[mottaloo]

This short video sums up my feelings to our stop/start/stop again season - tiny bit sweary :

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by mottaloo

[JoshVilla]

Another transitional season. Here's hoping that it's going to be the last one for a while. Coutinho and Kamara are huge statement signings for next season. If we can add a few more top quality signings then maybe we'll actually start seeing season by season improvement.

[VBM]

Frustrating season to put it mildly. 

I'm no coach but two aspects stood out to me. 

1. Our dysfunctional midfield. Not sure what the issue is here as when I look at the components the players seem pretty good, but they are very much less than the sum of their parts. Our inability to keep possession and lose controls of games is crazy. Lets hope Kamara is the players who makes it all work. 

2. Mental weakness, twice in a single season to be winning 2-0 and lose 3-2, just shows a weak mentality. That is not a tactical issue it is a mental issue. 

[The Fun Factory]

Pre season was a utter dog breakfast with coaches leaving, Covid, and the Grealish saga.

The transfers have so far been a mixed bag of success, on the back of summer 2020 which we did very well on. Buendia took a while to settle in, Bailey has not been fit, and Ings has been in and out of the team and has always felt a bit of a panic signing.

Post Grealish we lost our identity and Smith struggled to get us going after the Watford debacle.  It was sad to see Deano go but if you are being level headed our form for all of 2021 had been fairly poor. Jury still out on Gerrard but there has been some signs of improvement and he can clearly bring in top quality players with his name which Deano could never do.

We have been largely predictable beating teams we should beat and losing to most of the top 6 sides apart from the win at United. Home form not good enough with 6 wins and this atmosphere has been flatter than what I thought it would be after a year away from the stands.  No cup runs to make things interesting.

Off the pitch exciting redevelopment plans shows that we are thinking big. Unfortunately a downside of this is massive ticket price increases from next season.

So overall a largely flat and underwhelming season in which we are getting used to a new coach.  However it is our third year back in the prem and I feel that we are well and truly consolidated as a top flight club. We are in our best place as a club since the early Lerner years- however the landscape since then is even more competitive.

We have the resources, we have the ambition and we have the potential to challenge for a top half finish next season.

We just have to go out there and do it.

[tomsky_11]

Summer window was postive overall. Was shame to lose Grealish, especially having been looking forward to him and Buendia playing together. Very pleased to sign Bailey having seen him a few times out in Germany, think he'll have a part to play for us next season. Ings I felt at time we overpaid and maybe should have stregthened midfield.

Disappointing start under Smith which pretty much set this season up as nothing better than a transitional one. Wasn't expecting such a bad start but felt a lot of bad luck with player availability had big impact .Thought at time was wrong decision to sack Smith given previous acheivements and player unavailability had meant he hadn't really had a proper chance with the summer signings. But did also feel we'd started to change tactically away from how he'd been and Brentford and how we'd started under him and not for the better. Think we would have ended up safe anyway if we'd kept him, but do think we are in a better place now though for having made the change.

Gerrard appointment I was initially a little apprehensive about given perceived lack of managerial experience. But after reading a bit about his coaching team (mostly Beale) and their tactical set up I felt a lot more positive, and even more so after seeing these tactical elements already being picked up by our players in the first half of the first game. Potential impact of former player of his stature on both current players and potential signings felt like an improvement on Smith as well.

Gerrard's decent start and an exceptional Jan window meant I felt we were always safe so never really worried about this season. Only disappointment perhaps being it did have me thinking maybe a euro push could be on. But the Feb games killed that a fair bit, especially as the Leeds-Newcastle-Watford run was the first time I thought we got it wrong tactically whereas the previous defeats had all felt like the right approach but came down to individual player error and bad luck.

After that it's always felt to me like performances and learnings for the coaching team were more important than the results (From a results perspective we are on the low end of what my expectations were when Gerrard came in. I figured if the ppg was the equivalent of 50-60 points for a full season we'd have a good base to build on next season. We are 49.3 so only just outside that.), almost like a pre-pre-season. It's been extra time for us to practice the way Gerrard/Beale want us to play next season, for management to get an idea about who to let go and the gaps we need to fill in the system, and for players we are retaining to get more used to the team set up and their individual roles.

Looking at it this way I feel fairly postive about this season and a lot more positive about next season. I think we have started to look better as a team on the whole, created more chances for ourselves while also looking like a more defensively solid unit. The biggest issues in terms of personnel in this system have been exposed and it looks very much like we've just fixed the biggest and most critical of these issues today by signing Kamara. Individuals I expect to be key next season, like Cash, Digne and Ramsey have all fit the system well and improved as season has progressed, while Coutinho and Buendia have shown at times what they are capable of and I think will only improve next season.

[tomsky_11]

1 hour ago, VBM said:

1. Our dysfunctional midfield. Not sure what the issue is here as when I look at the components the players seem pretty good, but they are very much less than the sum of their parts. Our inability to keep possession and lose controls of games is crazy. Lets hope Kamara is the players who makes it all work.

The issue is players out of their natural roles/positions. Luiz isn't suited to that central DM role in this set up as he's asked to do a lot defensively and he's just not quite good enough in this aspect. McGinn is better operating further forward as he's a good creative force in the final third and his techinical failings are less exposed. This is fine in games when we are on top but when we are against stronger opposition and on the back foot McGinn drops deeper because he will put himself about defensively (one of the highest in the league for tackles), but this leads to him receiving the ball in deeper areas where he is less effective and more likely to make turnovers. Ramsey is very good. But still young and maybe has had a bit of burnout on occasion.

1 hour ago, VBM said:

2. Mental weakness, twice in a single season to be winning 2-0 and lose 3-2, just shows a weak mentality. That is not a tactical issue it is a mental issue. 

Not sure this is so big an issue. Or even necessarily an issue at all. The two games referred to, the first there was a massive amount of luck in all the goals IIRC, and yesterdays game there were expectional bits of play from the opposition in all three, as well as a notable and understandable difference in energy. There were also similar personnel changes preceding both collapses that I think few would argue were anything other than a notable drop in quality, especially from a ball retention perspective. Having much better quality bench options for late on in games, which we should have after this summer, will go some way to preventing late turnarounds like these.

 

[TomC]

I like tomsky_11’s characterization of this as a transition season. We didn’t go forwards, we didn’t go backwards, but a lot changed.

We finished 3 places lower, so you could say we went slightly backwards, but only 7 points separate 8th to 14th, with a bit of a gap either side of that group, and there’s not much to choose among those teams. Like last year, we were part of a vast middle class. (Based on our history, we should be at least upper middle class.) I see it as standing still.

The club’s declared pre-season goal was to have the attack less dependent on one man, i.e. Grealish. We succeeded at that. I won’t re-post the full statistics that I posted in the summer transfer window thread (see page 250), but in short, last year, only four players were serious contributors (Grealish, El Ghazi, Watkins, Traore.) We scored 52 goals this year, only three fewer than last year. More importantly, we had nine players who were better contributors per 90 minutes than last year’s 5th placed player. I know that many disagree, but the new signings were good: Ings, Coutinho, and Buendia were our top three contributors per 90 minutes and comparable to Grealish, El Ghazi, and Traore the year before. Ings and Buendia were criminally underused, whereas Watkins had an off-year but was undroppable.

So, we now have depth so we’re not screwed if a star gets hurt. Now we can hope to add some Grealish-level players back in (e.g. Coutinho) and they will have contributors around them rather than being expected to do it all. This is why I like calling this year a transition. While it seems like we may have merely stood still, I think that we laid a foundation for the future.

Our slip within the league’s middle-class group is largely because we let in 8 more goals this year, some of them at inopportune times. (Wolves, City, etc.) Last year, only the “Big 6” let in fewer goals than us, and some of those only barely fewer (Man U two less, Spurs one less.) This year we started with the same backline that had been a rock the year before, Cash-Konsa-Mings-Targett. What happened?

Only Cash got any better. Mings was a little off this year (maybe Martinez too), while Konsa and Targett regressed considerably. Targett showed up for the season not looking fit and was exposed without Grealish in front of him. Furthermore, Deano’s experiment with 5-3-2 didn’t help.

But SG steadied the ship a bit; in his 27 matches, we were on pace to give up 48 goals for the season, only two worse than the year before. Digne and Chambers helped here.

The problem remained in midfield. Our possession went down from 51% to 46%, which is where we missed Grealish. Keep the ball 5% more like last year and I bet we prevent a few goals. McGinn gives the ball away too easily; comparing like-to-like players, JJ’s pass completion percentage was 86%, Dougie’s was 83%, and McGinn’s was 75%. Neither Dougie nor McGinn helped that much with goal contributions (JJ did more than either of them), and neither is a true DM, either, so what do they bring? SG seems to love McGinn, and he knows a thing or two about playing midfield, so maybe he sees McGinn doing some little things that I don't. But to me, McGinn and Doug were both disappointing. At least JJ was a bright spot. All three seemed to fatigue when February rolled around, just like Doug and McGinn did last year; the failure to rotate was all disappointing and one of my main criticisms of both managers. You especially don’t want to burn out a young player like JJ.

The managers? The difference is that Deano tried to find a system that fit the pieces and never succeeded. SG knows exactly how he wants to play and tried to fit the players to the system rather than the other way around. They were both doomed to fail; no system was going to work with the mismatched skill sets of JJ, Dougie, and McGinn in midfield. If SG wants his system to work, now he has to sign his players. Kamara is step 1...

 

[Vancvillan]

Forgettable.

[MWARLEY2]

As frustrating and frustrated as a 14 year old with no wifi or data and his parents are out for the evening. 

[BleedClaretAndBlue]

The very few positives to take from a disjointed/transitional season;

Liverpool 1-0 Aston Villa

Aston Villa 1-2 Man City

Aston Villa 1-2 Liverpool

Man City 3-2 Aston Villa

The 2 best sides in the country, probably the world, we’ve given a game to on each of the 4 occasions this season. In isolation thats progress. We performed admirably each time and in another universe we pick up points. Even that Chelsea 3-0 loss was a very impressive performance we somehow managed to lose.

Its the inconsistency everywhere else this season. The defeats to Watford, not being able to beat those above us, etc. Its a big job ahead of Gerrard, but we are making big moves in the market, I think Purslow is excellent at selling the club and the project and deserves a lot of credit for how professional we as a club come across now. Losing Jack and Deano in the same season was always going to leave the fanbase feeling some apathy but to be fair to the club, they’ve appeased the fans well enough with timing of announcements after the kicks in the teeth (Ings announced just before Grealish; Kamara announced a day after the season ending and the disappointment at the Etihad)

My few favourite games this season;

Man Utd 0-1 Aston Villa

Leeds 0-3 Aston Villa

Aston Villa 4-0 Southampton

The Bailey cameo and subsequent eruption at Villa Park in the 3-0 Everton win. The comeback at home to United.

Player wise, the obvious, Ramsey and Cash the standouts. Digne aswell second half of season was excellent. Konsa the biggest disappointment, Martinez also dropped his standards slightly imo. Carney disappointed me but gets something of a pass due to his age. Wont be as annoyed if he goes, put it that way.
 

It was all disjointed on the whole but the amount of disruptions we’ve had to deal with wasnt normal so I can write it all off in my head quite easily and I am very much looking forward to a clean slate next season. Transfer windows are as exciting as they’ve ever been at Villa nowadays so lets roll on now and start achieving our targets.

 

UTV

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by BleedClaretAndBlue