The Aston Villa high line thread

[TRO]

Every system has its "fors" and "againsts" if there was one foolproof one every team, would play it.

The high line, has to have other things going on, to support it as a good idea.....If you don't execute the things that are necessary to support the highline, it could appear foolhardy.....There are ways of exploiting it....as there are with any system.

My observation is....If the highline is breached, and no offside is called....its so very, very easy to score.

Some will say, if you are going to concede, make it as hard as possible for the opposition to do it.

I think the high line lends itself to having more of a slant towards scoring, than defending, thats the call any team makes.....I am not suggesting who is right and who is wrong.

The highline, undoubtedly divides opinion...I just think its harder to score, than to defend your goal, and a clean sheet is such a platform to build from, so why not ensure you deny the opposition from scoring as your first peg in the ground.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the majority of our performances this year, but I would be lying, if I said at times, even when we are winning, I am nervy.

I still think we are too easy to score against, despite the great wins, and its not always on the cards we can be so prolific as Sunday evidently displayed.

However....I am not about to try and tell, one of the best managers around, what is right and what is wrong.....I trust in Unai.

Ps Its also Interesting to see as food for thought....That Ange at Spurs, is not in favour of playing out from the back, or wasn't at one time, so they all have their own idiosyncraises as to how they want to play....I guess personnel( players)available,  is a huge influence.

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by TRO

[DJBOB]

11 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Disagree. It’s OK persisting with the high line - a clear part of how we play - but it was apparent against Forest incredibly early on that they were looking to exploit it (and successfully did). We did absolutely nothing to mitigate their attacks.

We didn’t continue a high line but push Digne/Cash wide and defensive to cover for Elanga (in particular), or aggressively win the ball back in the middle of the pitch. We just let them ping ball after ball behind us. Even some of the offsides weren’t actually offside. 

The onus of calling offside is the referee and the iffy lines they draw from VAR. It's of the same concept Liverpool/City/Arsenal use to compress the game because any hair offside is likely to be called.

Yes, there is clear risk to it but in the second half, Forest only had 12 touches in our third of the pitch. For the whole second half!

Unfortunately one of the touches was a bungled in shot.

[DJBOB]

6 minutes ago, TRO said:

Every system has its "fors" and "againsts" if there was one foolproof one every team, would play it.

The high line, has to have other things going on, to support it as a good idea.....If you don't execute the things that are necessary to support the highline, it could appear foolhardy.....There are ways of exploiting it....as there are with any system.

My observation is....If the highline is breached, and no offside is called....its so very, very easy to score.

Some will say, if you are going to concede, make it as hard as possible for the opposition to do it.

I think the high line lends itself to having more of a slant towards scoring, than defending, thats the call any team makes.....I am not suggesting who is right and who is wrong.

The highline, undoubtedly divides opinion...I just think its harder to score, than to defend your goal, and a clean sheet is such a platform to build from, so why not ensure you deny the opposition from scoring as your first peg in the ground.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the majority of our performances this year, but I would be lying, if I said at times, even when we are winning, I am nervy.

I still think we are too easy to score against, despite the great wins, and its not always on the cards we can be so prolific as Sunday evidently displayed.

However....I am not about to try and tell, one of the best managers around, what is right and what is wrong.....I trust in Unai.

Ps Its also Interesting to see as food for thought....That Ange at Spurs, is not in favour of playing out from the back, or wasn't at one time, so they all have their own idiosyncraises as to how they want to play....I guess personnel( players)available,  is a huge influence.

 

Maybe he wasn't at one time but Spurs this year play out of the back with the same frequency we do. 

Spurs also play with a high line as they are third in the league on catching the opponent offside.

[Demitri_C]

We need faster defenders if we going to play this high line.

I think thats why we saw diaby stayong back at times because he is our quickest player.

We need a pacey rb thats for sure

[DJBOB]

As many others have alluded, this thread is almost never bumped (home and away) when we win but brought up when we lose despite that the goals weren't even given up because of our high line.

Might Unai rely a bit too much on it? Maybe yes, but it is usually not the reason we lose. It allows us both to continue tilting the pitch away from our final third, give opponents less shots, and press deep for high turnovers (like we did against Brighton, West Ham, and AZ).

 

[bobzy]

11 minutes ago, DJBOB said:

The onus of calling offside is the referee and the iffy lines they draw from VAR. It's of the same concept Liverpool/City/Arsenal use to compress the game because any hair offside is likely to be called.

Yes, there is clear risk to it but in the second half, Forest only had 12 touches in our third of the pitch. For the whole second half!

Unfortunately one of the touches was a bungled in shot.

One offside call would have infuriated me if it happened against us. Ball over to Awoniyi who was clean through on goal, linesman raised his flag rather than letting play go on (as they usually do). He was well onside.

And yeah, Forest didn’t need to do anything after going 2-0 up. Just sit deep and don’t give us space. They’d already done the damage pinging the ball over the top of us and cutting the ball back to an apparent abyss in our midfield. Their goals were almost identical - we didn’t learn all game long. 

[DJBOB]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

One offside call would have infuriated me if it happened against us. Ball over to Awoniyi who was clean through on goal, linesman raised his flag rather than letting play go on (as they usually do). He was well onside.

And yeah, Forest didn’t need to do anything after going 2-0 up. Just sit deep and don’t give us space. They’d already done the damage pinging the ball over the top of us and cutting the ball back to an apparent abyss in our midfield. Their goals were almost identical - we didn’t learn all game long. 

That is the risk if it comes off.

I just find it a bit silly to blame the high line only when we lose when it was part of the reason we won against Chelsea (caught offside 10 times), Brighton (caught offside 6 times), AZ (caught offside 8 times), and Luton (caught offside 6 times).

They hit some low percentage shots outside the box that went in and we whiffed on a bunch of a shots that should've been goals inside the box.

[AV82]

1 minute ago, DJBOB said:

That is the risk if it comes off.

I just find it a bit silly to blame the high line only when we lose when it was part of the reason we won against Chelsea (caught offside 10 times), Brighton (caught offside 6 times), AZ (caught offside 8 times), and Luton (caught offside 6 times).

They hit some low percentage shots outside the box that went in and we whiffed on a bunch of a shots that should've been goals inside the box.

Not to mention that you can't always expect a RB with no goals for his club to pull out a finish like that.

[DJBOB]

3 minutes ago, AV82 said:

Not to mention that you can't always expect a RB with no goals for his club to pull out a finish like that.

Neither had a goal to their name and were hit far outside the box. If you would've asked Villa fans before the game that those were the shots we would be giving up, I don't think anyone would've had a problem with it.

[Talldarkandransome]

I think it worked quite well, loads of offsides. I'm more worried about our finishing than defending

[Mic09]

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

We did absolutely nothing to mitigate their attacks.

Well, we sort of did. Because they barely had any. They scored 2 goals from outside the box. 

[bobzy]

20 minutes ago, AV82 said:

Not to mention that you can't always expect a RB with no goals for his club to pull out a finish like that.

He’d scored a banger for West Brom previously FWIW.  Probably has a decent shot on him. 

[DJBOB]

Stan with a good take on this. 
 

 

[tonyh29]

how many trophies have Dublin and Collymore won as managers between them ?

no contrast with Emery  ...

so respectfully , they can both STFU 

[El Segundo]

But Collymore is agreeing with Emery isn't he?  And I think he's right.  People commented on our high line at Liverpool being an issue but none of their goals came directly from us playing it, even though our pressing that day, which is meant to be an important part of making it work,  was pretty bad, and they did get in behind a fair bit. 

Our issue yesterday was if they did beat the highline then every defender and midfielder seemed to bomb back into the box, even though there were only three, maybe four Forest players to watch in that area.  The forwards didn't track back and there was therefore that big gap at the edge of the box for their players to line up shots.  If Zaniolo tracks back with the full back he would not have been able to get his shot away.  If one of the midfielders had not dropped back so deep for the second, maybe the second shot doesn't materialise.  Then it was a case of one being very well placed and one being totally messed up by our keeper.   Not the fault of the high line.

[DJBOB]

7 minutes ago, El Segundo said:

But Collymore is agreeing with Emery isn't he?  And I think he's right.  People commented on our high line at Liverpool being an issue but none of their goals came directly from us playing it, even though our pressing that day, which is meant to be an important part of making it work,  was pretty bad, and they did get in behind a fair bit. 

Our issue yesterday was if they did beat the highline then every defender and midfielder seemed to bomb back into the box, even though there were only three, maybe four Forest players to watch in that area.  The forwards didn't track back and there was therefore that big gap at the edge of the box for their players to line up shots.  If Zaniolo tracks back with the full back he would not have been able to get his shot away.  If one of the midfielders had not dropped back so deep for the second, maybe the second shot doesn't materialise.  Then it was a case of one being very well placed and one being totally messed up by our keeper.   Not the fault of the high line.

Collymore is agreeing with Emery but I agree in general with @tonyh29 that the vast majority of pundits are managerial idiots without a trophy in between them. The high line is very visual and 'looks' risky even though the underlying data and the obvious reasons (low percentage shots went in and we didn't take our chances) are the far more obvious reasons we lost.

Tellingly, successful managers never comment on the high line because they know exactly the pros and cons and who's good at it and who's not.

 

[OutByEaster?]

I thought the high line worked very well against Forest - neither of their goals were a result of them breaking the offside trap and we kept them to very few chances otherwise.

Dumb pundits seem to often go off their emotion on a game and get very excited about chances that were created from offside positions - constantly telling us about danger and sooner or later and risks after we've calmly and successfully played someone offside again. I've noticed in games they'll sometimes talk about chances that the opposition had earlier in the game and conveniently forget that those chances were flagged as offside - we can sometimes look like we give teams half a dozen chances a game - they're almost all offside.

I also think we need to take into account the offensive side to the high line - it's designed so that we can overwhelm teams with our centrebacks playing in positions where they're almost midfielders - it allows Torres and Konsa to play passes directly into strikers and to begin attacks and it allows the full backs to get forward to let Mcginn and co. come inside.

Dublin is wrong - we're not in trouble more often than not, we're safe as houses more often than not.

[OutByEaster?]

2 hours ago, bobzy said:

Even some of the offsides weren’t actually offside. 

I can't remember a single one they got wrong.

[andym]

First goal wasn't a ball over the top. Cash simply got done far too easily on a 1-2 and yes that meant space in behind, but our overall positioning in that situation was no different to how a multitude of teams set up. We got plenty of men back, but Luiz's decision to not close down was fatal - if anything we had too many too deep when the shot came in (not helped by Cash tripping over his own feet trying to track back, which drags Konsa out to cover the Forest player, which drags a midfielder into the box).

2nd goal Cash again gets easily beaten, but in the end its still a shit looping ball in that Konsa should be getting, but he completely misjudges. That allows Forest to recycle the ball back out, but again, we still have 8 outfield players back between the goal scorer and the goal - some not great closing down and some awful keeping costs us.

[It's Your Round]

Our high line and precision execution of the offside trap is a wonder to behold. It’s an amazing piece of coordination that is successful game after game, hats off to Emery for getting this team so good at it. 
 

As has been said above, pundits are lazy and ignorant. Someone mentions our high line being risky and they all jump on it. I doubt managers are as lazy in their assumptions, but if they were to believe this narrative then it absolutely works in our favour.