West Ham vs Aston Villa Tactical Preview 26/07/2020
A thankfully pressure-free last game of the season for us. We drove the final nail into the coffin of Norwich, endangered Watford so badly they sacked their manager with two games to go, and we could relegate Villa if we beat them badly enough. That would be a hell of a hat-trick.
This was tricky. I’m a bit pressed for time, I haven’t seen that many of Villa’s recent games, and it feels a bit like Dean Smith has been flinging shit at the wall, desperately trying to make something stick — all of which makes it hard to draw definitive conclusions about the way Villa play, at least in a vaguely succinct way.
Team Shape
Villa were, probably justifiably, criticised for repeating the mistakes of Fulham last year by bringing in too many players this summer, although a lot of their summer business was converting loan players from their promotion season (Mings, El Ghazi), replacing the loanees they couldn’t keep (Abraham) or filling the spots of veteran players whose contracts expired (Whelan, Hutton, Bjarnason, Jedinak, Adomah, Elphick).
And while the crux of those criticisms centred on the difficulties of building cohesion with such a churn of playing staff, signing so many different players at once also presents the problem of having too many options. That may seem like a luxury, but when things are going wrong the temptation is to mix things up to get a reaction. It seems like Smith has fallen into that hole at times this season, chopping and changing things constantly in an attempt to find the right combination of elements to make things work.
In the last few games, Villa finally seem to have settled a bit, although these average position maps don’t tell the story of the in-game tactical and formation shifts that have occurred as they chase results:
Even from looking at squad numbers you can see how much variation in selection there has been (some of that is down to injuries, though).
Basic summary:
- General 4–3–3 shape, with the left-footed El Ghazi (21) cutting in or the right-footed Trezeguet (17) playing very narrowly from the right wing, Samatta (20) as a typical target man through the middle, and Grealish (10) roaming anywhere from a nominal left sided starting position
- Smith’s current midfield blend of Douglas Luiz (6) as the deep distributor, Hourihane (14) as a stitch-it-together passer on the left, and McGinn (7) as a more advanced contributor (more of a dribbler/shooter than a passer).
- Mings (40) drops off to receive the ball off his GK and help progress play up the pitch
- Elmohamady (27) as the more advanced FB when he starts, with the LB taking over that role when Ezri Konsa (15) fills in on the right.
In Possession
It’s no surprise or any great insight that Jack Grealish is the beating heart of this team. But it’s worth considering how they get the ball to him.
Villa are another side who like to build up down the left. Mings is the outlet for his goalkeeper, which you can see in the heatmaps:
(There’s a little node on the left of the Villa box but it seems like Palace did a good job of disrupting that build down the left. I’ve not had a chance to watch that game, but it’d be worthwhile figuring out how they managed that. fbref has Jordan Ayew down as one of the most active pressers in the league and he plays down that side for Palace, so perhaps it was his work)
Tyrone Mings has more touches in the defensive 3rd and own penalty area than any other outfield player in this Villa side, and he’s generally the one charged with getting it out of the back.
Mings often doesn’t have to do much to get it to his team’s danger man. Have a look at where Grealish touches the ball:
Grealish is absolutely everywhere, across the whole width of the pitch, including his own full-back zones (especially on his starting left side).
His tendency to drop deep and do it all himself does cause his team some problems. It was less of an issue last year where he played as part of a midfield three and he had mobile players ahead of him to stretch the game. This season, Smith’s eventually settled on using Grealish on the left of his front three, with a license to roam, meaning there’s fewer players making runs in advance of him when he drops back to get the ball off his defence.
With a fairly conventional target man in the centre forward role (Mbwana Samatta, Wesley, and Keinan Davis have broadly similar builds and playing styles), the preponderance of Villa’s shots come from their wide players (Trézéguet 2.32 per 90, El Ghazi 2.20, Grealish 1.95) with some help from their central midfielders (McGinn 2.11, Hourihane 1.79).
None of these shots are especially high quality ones. El Ghazi is the only one whose non-penalty xG per shot is into double figures (0.11), whereas Trézéguet (0.08), Grealish (0.08), McGinn (0.07), and Hourihane (0.06) are all much of a (low quality) muchness.
The reason for that becomes clear when you look at where these lads are taking their open play shots from. First the wide players:
So many blocked shots. El Ghazi’s got into more central locations but has often missed the target entirely from those shots. Grealish and Trézéguet shoot frequently from wider positions and from longer range, which are obviously more difficult to score from.
Then the central midfielders:
McGinn gets further forward and takes more chances from the middle of the box, but he’s also peppering efforts from way down town. Hourihane, meanwhile, is more restrained but still pinging them mostly from outside the box.
And then Samatta’s:
Much more dangerous areas, but if you look at this map on Understat, they’re almost all headers.
Their struggle to manufacture chances for their centre forward is partly down to their wingers — although they’re getting shots off for themselves, they actually create relatively little for the other players in the team.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that game model — it’s basically what Liverpool do — but Villa just haven’t got the right blend to make it work for them.
But here’s a bit of a chicken and an egg situation here: do the wingers take on shots because their strikers don’t get themselves into goalscoring positions? Or do their strikers struggle for shots because their wingers are trigger happy?
Then again, is the wide player’s lack of productivity due to Grealish taking responsibility for his team’s creative duties squarely on his own shoulders? He’s clocked up the 2nd highest Key Passes (91) in the league behind KDB (121) and he’s in the top 10 for per 90 rate — Buendía is the only other one from that group who doesn’t play for a top six club.
So Grealish roams and creates shots for his team at an elite level. But how do they get him in possession? And who else moves the ball?
Despite that tendency to drop deep, Villa’s captain isn’t the one who passes the ball into the final 3rd — that’s the task of Douglas Luíz (4.04) and their full-backs (Elmohamady (3.65), then Targett and Guilbert at 3ish times per 90).
How about forward passes that don’t necessarily end up in the final third? Villa’s progressive passes again come primarily from their full-backs — Elmohamady (6.78), Guilbert (6.51), Targett (6.33) — and also from their left-sided midfielders Grealish (6.30) and Hourihane (5.00), which makes sense when we consider their heat maps.
Grealish isn’t the one passing the ball forwards from the back half of the pitch. So what’s he doing with his touches when he drops off to get the ball?
In a word: dribbling. He puts in 3.33 dribbles per 90 (surprisingly that’s fewer than Trézéguet’s 3.57), with a success rate of just over 60%. In addition, Grealish carries the ball further than any of his other team-mates and carries it forward virtually twice as far as his team’s next highest player. (8th in the league for progressive distance per 90).
Interestingly the rest of Villa’s progressive carries are clustered to the right (McGinn/Trézeguet/El Ghazi/Elmohamady/Hause/Guilbert), which makes sense — it’s all Grealish’s responsibility down the left, which reduces how much their other left-sided players are dribbling the ball up the pitch. He almost literally carries this team himself.
Less surprisingly, Grealish receives the overwhelming majority of Villa’s passes (1442), with Mings (957), Luíz (908) and Targett (749) far behind. But again, there’s that left side influence to those pass recipients.
What do Villa do once they’re in the final third? Well, Ahmed Elmohamady quite likes an open play cross into the penalty area: his 1.39 per 90 is highest rate in the league among players who’ve played a decent number of games. The next highest in the Villa team is El Ghazi and Guilbert (0.66 and 0.64). Needless to say, they cross from the right and Grealish has a habit of sneaking onto the end of them at the far post:
Elmohamady is out injured for this game, which negates that threat slightly but as the first clip shows, Konsa’s capable of chucking it into the mixer if given space to do so. With Cresswell likely out injured as well, Masuaku’s ability to close down crosses is going to be tested.
When we look more broadly at passes into the penalty area (which includes crosses), Grealish’s influence exerts itself again. He put in 2.21 per 90 and has accumulated the 3rd highest total in the league (77). From the Villa side of things, after him it’s Elmomady (1.91, inflated by his crossing numbers) then a massive drop off to Targett and McGinn (1.18 and 1.17).
Putting all of that together, you can get a picture of how this Villa team tend to move the ball around the pitch: they pass the ball to their holding midfielder or the left-side of their defence. They then move it on to Grealish, who carries the ball up the pitch and tries to pass the ball into the box. If that doesn’t work, he switches play and Villa’s RB or RW try to cross the ball.
What’s the best way for us to stifle that?
I don’t think a typical man-marking scheme works unless you’re playing with three conventional central midfielders —if half of your double pivot is following an opponent all over the pitch, it disrupts your defensive shape too much. But I think one way of managing Villa’s threat would be to get Declan Rice to defend on the side of midfield that Grealish is playing when he roams; once he crosses a vertical half-way line, Rice and Souček cross over and swap positions.
Bowen came off injured during the week so it seems likely that Yarmolenko will deputise — how willing and able he is to help out on the defensive side of things will dictate how well we nullify Villa’s threat down that side.
The other thing to do is to stay compact but push the defensive line high up. Villa don’t have an abundance of pace in this side, so we don’t have to be too worried about getting caught in behind. Squeeze the back four up behind our midfielders so Grealish has much less open space to carry the ball into when he drops. Give him a wall of bodies to dribble through. Stop him before he gets going.
I’d like to see a more expansive side of Ben Johnson’s game here, too. He’s looked comfortable on the defensive side of things but hasn’t had much opportunity to show what he can offer in possession. Get him on the overlap to try and drag Grealish back towards his own goal.
Out of Possession
Again, due to injuries and shifting personnel, it’s hard to make sweeping statements.
On the whole, they’re a fairly passive side, not pressing an excessive amount in any region of the pitch. But when they do close down, it tends to be in the back half of the pitch. Even that is influenced by the players available to Dean Smith — John McGinn, for instance, is a much more active presser than some of his team-mates and his aggression out of possession was important in stifling Arsenal during Villa’s crucial win last weekend.
Likewise with Trézéguet who is quite a busy player without the ball but has struggled to establish himself as first choice and Wesley who got through a decent amount of defensive work higher up the pitch, but has been out injured since January (Samatta does more pressing in the middle/final thirds but attempted fewer tackles overall).
There’s every possibility that Dean Smith planned for his side to defend in different areas, but has been robbed of that possibility by personnel issues.
Then there’s the circumstances of the game: with survival on the line, do Villa adopt a more proactive defensive style to take the game to our players?
Based on recent games, Villa’s approach without possession seems to be focused on stopping the ball being played into the opponent’s deepest midfielder, rather than pressing CBs.
When Arsenal’s central defenders were on the ball, Villa arranged themselves into a 4–3–3 defensive shape. But unusually they had their two wide CMs (Hourihane and McGinn) push forward alongside Samatta to shut off space and let their wingers drop back level with Douglas Luíz. When the ball was shifted to the FBs, the Villa central midfielder on the far side dropped back into the midfield line to make a 4–4–2 shape.
That might have been a ploy to combat Arsenal’s back three structure. In contrast, against Manchester United they had their wingers play in the first line of defence instead of their CMs, even though Matic was playing as an auxiliary CB in Man United’s build-up play.
In the second half of the Arsenal game, Arteta changed to a back four and Villa adapted their approach to a more standard 4–4–2 defensive shape to thwart that.
Against Everton’s back four, Villa defended in a 4–4–2 with the FBs narrower than their wingers, so I imagine that’s what we’ll see here:
This is all potentially irrelevant to this match as we’re not a side who tends to play through our central midfielders or who build out from the back much at all. But Smith has shown himself to be adaptable and versatile in his organisation and how Villa structure themselves without the ball is something to keep an eye on throughout this game.
Set Pieces
The thing that people talk about with Grealish is how often he gets fouled (165 times this season, highest in the league with Zaha 2nd on 118). It was the same story in the Championship last year. Is that down to the gravity he has in possession, where teams are unable to deal with him within the laws of the game and feel the need to snuff out his threat unfairly? Or is it, as Graeme Souness suggested, a sign of him holding onto the ball too long?
Cherry picking one clip and drawing conclusions from it is deeply unfair, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Watching Villa, you do sometimes see situations like this one:
They launch a break and their main man is in the driving seat. He gets them up the pitch and, although this one didn’t actually result in a foul, he turns down the opportunity to play more incisive passes because he either doesn’t spot them or doesn’t trust the team-mates making the runs. When he does eventually play the pass, it’s out wide to someone who has an awkward angle to shoot from. As good as Grealish is, this occasional dawdling and indecision costs his team and is part of the reason he ends up getting fouled so often.
Given they have a foul-winning machine in the team, it’s unsurprising that Villa’s set piece record is very good on the attacking end — they’ve scored 15 set piece goals (3rd best).
6 of their last 7 goals have come from set pieces and Villa only have 1 open play goal since the restart. Trézéguet has scored a couple of goals lately by lurking at the far post to finish off near post deliveries that make their way through:
On the defensive side, they have conceded 15 goals from set piece situations, joint-2nd worst in the Premier League, despite the height they have at the back. I haven’t had a chance to see exactly where those vulnerabilities lie, but that’s an area we could get joy from.
Keys to the Game
- Stifle their left, attack down their right. If you watch the highlights of the games against Everton and Liverpool, most of their good moments came from attacking the right side of Villa’s defence. One of the more baffling parts of the Pellegrini era was how he utilised Arthur Masuaku — often he’d start but be forced into holding his positon while Pablo Zabaleta bombed on down our right side, which was completely arse about face. This is a great game to unleash Masuaku in. Let him go wild with his dribbling and see if Villa’s right-sided defenders have the tools to stop him.
- Does Yarmolenko have the same defensive capability as Bowen? Can he support Johnson and keep Villa’s ball progression down his side to a minimum.
- Don’t get caught in a crossing game. If Konsa replaces Elmohamady and Hause plays CB, that’s 3 big Villa defenders including Mings to beat in the air. If we’re throwing it in from the left and Antonio can get himself onto Targett, then maybe. But we need to find other avenues of attack if we don’t want it to end up like the Burnley match.
- If we have to foul Grealish (and we’re going to foul Grealish) do it in his own half so we’re not giving away set pieces in dangerous locations. Squeeze the back line up and defend higher up the pitch so he has less space to carry the ball into.
- Shout out to Keinan Davis, who looks far more dangerous than Samatta every time he comes on. There’s a touch of the Michail Antonios about him in the way he uses his physique and game intelligence to pin defenders and roll them. The composure in front of goal isn’t quite there yet, but he’s still learning the game at the top level. If he starts, Diop and Ogbonna won’t be able to slack off. Davis is someone I’d be quite happy with us pinching off Villa if they go down and he’s not part of their rebuild.
