Evening all.

I hope everyone profited from 10 man Crewe’s hard fought 2-1 win over a dogged Bradford side at Gresty Road on Tuesday night.

Did you ever really expect anything other than a win from the might combination that is BOTW and Crewe Alexandra?

I have a quick analysis piece for you tonight.  Sadly it is a bit out of date, as it is a piece I started putting together almost two weeks ago but my work schedule didn’t allow me to finish it off.

I probably start at least one article a week that ends up going in the e-bin as I normally refuse to post outdated stuff.

However, even in retrospect I think that the findings and analysis in this one are still well worth sharing.  So, although 80% of my narrative has sadly had to go down the can, I have refreshed the numbers and put together an updated version.  There are some interesting statistics in here that are still relevant and I hope you will take something from it – particularly with the added benefit of hindsight.

Given the title of the post, I would hope you have already guessed what the piece was going to be about.  However, I need to point out that when I penned the original piece Darren Bent was still a Sunderland player.   Aston Villa hadn’t beaten Manchester City 1-0.  And they certainly hadn’t chalked up their second away win of the season at the DW Stadium, to make it an impressive six points from six.

At the time of writing, Villa had just scraped a 1-1 draw from their big derby game with Birmingham City at Villa Park, and had only won one of their last 10 league fixtures – coincidentally that was a 2-1 victory over the free-falling West Brom which I tipped here at BOTW.

I had long held the opinion that Aston Villa’s demise was being grossly overstated by the UK football media – and subsequently by the betting masses, resulting in some excellent prices being available on the Villans in recent weeks.

I can’t honestly believe that Randy Lerner was seriously considering removing Gerard Houllier after only 4 months in charge, given the long term vision for the team and the increased focus on youth development rather than the short term “win now” strategy employed by so many clubs in the UK.

One of the biggest reasons for my optimistic outlook for the Villa ironically spawned from the same game that began their run of poor form which subsequently resulted in them lingering around the fringes of the relegation zone.

At 2:15pm on 13 November 2010, the BBC’s “as it stands” Premier League table looked like this:

Premier League table as at 2:15pm on 13 November 2010

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pt
1	Chelsea	12	9	1	2	28	5	23	28
2	Manchester United	13	6	6	1	24	15	9	24
3	Arsenal	12	7	2	3	24	11	13	23
4	Manchester City	12	6	3	3	15	10	5	21
5	Aston Villa	13	5	4	4	15	16	-1	19
6	Newcastle United	12	5	2	5	21	16	5	17
7	Bolton Wanderers	12	3	7	2	18	17	1	16
8	Tottenham Hotspur	12	4	4	4	14	15	-1	16
9	Sunderland	12	3	7	2	12	13	-1	16
10	Liverpool	12	4	4	4	13	15	-2	16
11	West Bromwich Albion	12	4	4	4	16	21	-5	16
12	Everton	12	3	6	3	13	11	2	15
13	Blackburn Rovers	12	4	3	5	13	14	-1	15
14	Blackpool	12	4	2	6	19	26	-7	14
15	Fulham	12	2	7	3	13	13	0	13
16	Stoke City	12	4	1	7	13	18	-5	13
17	Birmingham City	12	2	6	4	14	17	-3	12
18	Wigan Athletic	12	2	5	5	9	21	-12	11
19	Wolves	12	2	3	7	11	20	-9	9
20	West Ham United	12	1	5	6	11	22	-11	8

Now that doesn’t look like a failed regime to me?!

At the time, Villa were 2-0 up against my beloved Manchester United – and deservedly so I might add.

They had just beaten Blackpool 3-2 a few days earlier and hadn’t lost at home all season long – a run of six games, including a credible draw against high-flying Chelsea and a good 1-0 win against table placing rivals Everton.

A team blooding a number excellent young talents were more than holding their own with the Premier League’s elite, and bar one complete off day at St James’ Park they had been competitive in every single fixture this season.

On this day in particular, Marc Albrighton, Ashley Young et al were causing a hesitant United defence no end of trouble.  As he had done on many previous occasions, Gabby Agbonglahorg (private joke) was again causing a number of our players to have sporadic nervous fits.

Villa’s fast, counter attacking play was some of the best I had seen all season and they seemed capable of opening United up at will.  If my memory serves me correctly, I think they hit the woodwork 409 times in the first half.

However, as Blackpool fans found out this week – and Spurs fans have known for many, many years – no lead is ever safe against United.

Eighteen months after announcing himself to the Old Trafford faithful with one of the best debut goals in Premier League history against the same opposition, Federico Macheda again came off the bench again to save United’s blushes – this time smashing a cracker that even Jamie Redknapp would have been proud of to get United back into the game with less than 10 minutes left on the clock.

The rest, as they say, is history.  While we are on the subject, let’s indulge in a little history lesson:

Off topic, I couldn’t help but feeling a little melancholic listening to that commentary.  I have been far from his biggest fan in recent years and I am looking forward to a change, but the fact we may never here “take a bow son, take a bow” again seems rather sad I have to say.  That is the last I will say on the matter as I have spent two days resisting the temptation to blog on the entire fiasco.

Anyway, although it may have stung at the time, the draw was still a more than credible result for Villa’s youngsters and it left them sitting 8^th in the table and unbeaten in four.

However, with the fixture list pygmies working against them, Villa then went into the tailspin mentioned above, losing five of their next six games and rapidly dropping down the congested Premier League table.

It really should be noted that during this “terrible” run Villa’s home games were:

• Man United;
• Arsenal;
• West Brom;
• Tottenham; and
• Sunderland.

Not easy, I am sure you will admit.  It’s a bloody good job they did beat West Brom as I predicted to be honest!

Now that looks like an ugly run of games at the best of times.  Then consider their away games from the same stretch:

• Blackburn;
• Liverpool;
• Man City; and
• Chelsea.

Ah bejesus!  That really is a horrid run – it’s actually one of the most unbalanced runs of games I have ever seen.

As a result, my beady betting eye was all over the Villa like Andy Gray and the attractive office intern.

My view was then solidified on the 2^nd of January when Villa pushed Chelsea all the way at Stamford Bridge to take a point in a 3-3 classic.

I listened to that particular game on the radio whilst negotiating my way back to London down the M6/M1 after the festive break and I must say it was one of the most enjoyable radio commentaries I can remember in recent years.

The biggest factor in that was no doubt that I didn’t have to endure Alan Green as the game was on TalkSport rather than 5live.  But in addition, I have to give massive credit to both Sam Matterface and Stan Collymore for their commentary that day.

I am a bit of a commentary/punditry snob and more often than not choose to watch games with no commentary whatsoever rather than listen to some of the bile many of our channels try to ram down my ears.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Collymore in recent months.  He strikes a great balance, displaying a true passion for the game, a willingness to always give an honest opinion and provides a lot of insight into the players’ mindset of a top level player.   And he even supports this with a decent amount of tactical awareness to boot.

For those that don’t know, Stan is actually a Villa fan and on this particularly day he failed control the “fan” in him as Villa equalised in injury time – much to the annoyance of the Chelsea fans in front of the press box.

Have a listen to the soundbyte below – it is absolute commentary gold, up there with my favourite ever moments:

Classic stuff!  Whilst we are on the topic of Collymore and all-time commentary moments, I never need too much of an excuse to watch the following highlights.

Probably the best of the best.  “Collymore closing iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnn!”

Anyway, back to the analysis.  We are so far off the beaten track here it isn’t even funny.

As I listened to the post match phone and all of the of down heartened Villa supporters bemoaning Houllier and the state of their team, I couldn’t help but think it all seemed a bit over the top.

After all, they had just scored three goals against the Champions, had scored two against Man United and, although they admitted lost 4-2, scored a further two goals against Arsenal a month earlier as well.

How many other sides had managed to chalk up goals at such a rate against the League’s elite teams I wondered?

With such attacking ability, a manger of Houllier’s undoubted pedigree and a defence that was mostly unchanged from that which had the fourth best defensive record in 2009/10, surely is was only a matter of time before their results picked up I thought to myself, as I stared at the back of a filthy Eddie Stobart 12 wheeler.

Now before I get into the numbers that I subsequently produced, I would like to make it clear that I am well aware that scoring goals is only half of the battle – a goal prevented is just as valuable as a goal scored after all.

Well that is true in absolute terms.  However, consider a game that is 0-0.  Not an outlandish suggestion given that all games are 0-0 at some point.  In a league structure, at that point a goal conceded could cost the team in question one point.

However, the goal scored would actually be worth an additional two points to the opposite team.  So in relative terms, not all goals are even.  An obscure way of looking at it, I accept.  But some food for thought.

Roberto Mancini recently defended his tactical approach away from home so far this season, stating that “clean sheets win Championships”.  I am not sure he is correct on that one – last time I checked clean sheets can only get you draws.  Remind me to come back to City later on.

A teams performance actually correlates more strongly to goals scored than it does to goals conceded -  a principle it appears Ian Holloway has decided to test the boundaries of this season.

Check out the table below, which shows the goals per game rates of the Premier League sides this season – both overall and versus the “Top 5” sides.

Premier League goals per game analysis

		Total			v Top 5
Pos	Team	Games	Goals	GPG	Games	Goals	GPG	To play
1	Manchester United	23	51	2.22	4	3	0.75	4
2	Arsenal	23	48	2.09	6	8	1.33	2
3	Manchester City	24	37	1.54	5	1	0.20	3
4	Chelsea	23	42	1.83	4	4	1.00	4
5	Tottenham Hotspur	23	32	1.39	5	4	0.80	3
6	Sunderland	24	28	1.17	6	6	1.00	4
7	Blackburn Rovers	24	31	1.29	6	6	1.00	4
8	Newcastle United	23	36	1.57	7	5	0.71	3
9	Stoke City	23	28	1.22	5	4	0.80	5
10	Bolton Wanderers	23	34	1.48	6	7	1.17	4
11	Liverpool	23	30	1.30	5	6	1.20	5
12	Blackpool	23	34	1.48	5	4	0.80	5
13	Aston Villa	24	27	1.13	8	10	1.25	2
14	Everton	23	27	1.17	6	10	1.67	4
15	Fulham	23	25	1.09	6	5	0.83	4
16	WBA	23	29	1.26	6	7	1.17	4
17	Birmingham City	23	21	0.91	7	4	0.57	3
18	Wigan Athletic	24	20	0.83	6	3	0.50	4
19	Wolves	23	24	1.04	7	8	1.14	3
20	West Ham United	24	24	1.00	6	3	0.50	4

Observations

Now before people start flaming me for making up statistics to fit my arguments, I would just like to make the following primary observations on the table above:

• The top 4 in goals scored are the top 4 as they stand.  Newcastle United – entertaining as ever  – just about manage to squeeze their way in on a goals per game (GPG) basis;
• The bottom 4 are the bottom 4 as they stand, on both a total and GPG basis; and
• Only 9 goals separate all of the other sides in the league, with Aston Villa and Fulham (25) hanging out the back and Owen Coyle’s Bolton leading the way with 34 goals.

After only managing to chalk up 16 points from 18 games, we were made to believe that Gerard Houllier’s position was supposedly under threat.

Villa have lost nine games under the Frenchman- a pair of 1-0 reversals against Sunderland (6^th), a pair of 1-2 reversals against Spurs (5^th), and defeats to Arsenal (2nd), Man City (3rd), Liverpool (7^th) and Blackburn (8^th) and a single goal defeat away to Stoke (10^th).

Their only other defeat was away at Newcastle (9^th) under caretaker manager Kevin MacDonald.

Only three of these defeats were at Villa Park – and they were against teams who still retain hope of winning the Champions League this season.

Two things in particular jump out at me at this point:

1. Villa have played a disproportionate number of games against the league’s top sides; and
2. Most have these have also been away games they had little chance of winning.

So although the Villans were in the relegation zone a week or so ago, was that table really even a fair reflection of the results of the teams, let alone the more subjective performances?

Was it ever really as bleak as the media would lead us to believe?

I certainly don’t think so.

A ridiculous 1/3 of their games have been against the top 5 so far this season and they face Man United at Old Trafford in their next fixture at Old Trafford.  After that, they will have 13 games remaining, but only one against a top 5 side.

Every single one of their reaming home games is a more than winnable game.

The second part of the table above is an interesting indicator that I like to use – which assesses each teams’ ability to penetrate the defences of the league’s top teams.

Villa’s ten goals scored in eight games against the big teams, gives them the 3^rd best scoring rate against the top 5 – behind only Arsenal and Everton.

They were never likely to continue to leak goals at the rate they were under Houllier and they possess more than enough attacking threat to be a mid table side.

And now they have done exactly what so many teams have failed to do in recent years and addressed the biggest weakness in their squad by buying Darren Bent.  Yes Rafa, that is aimed at you.

So chin up Villa fans, and start getting behind your team and your manager a little more.  7^th place is not out even of the question this season.  Your team is full of cracking young players well worth supporting.  Enjoy it.

Here are a few other observations I would make from the data above:

The big guns

Not only have Arsenal managed to score a number of goals against their main rivals, but they also only have two games remaining against them.  That means they have at least a couple of free weeks to make up ground on Man United.  Their game at the end of April could end up being a barnstormer.

As we know, there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.  Whilst Man United have scored only three goals in their four big fixtures this season, they haven’t conceded a single goal and have managed to chalk up eight points from a possible twelve.  Efficient.

As for Mr Mancini and his clean sheets – one goal in five games against your main rivals is a bit of a disgrace to be honest.  Some would think that they were more focussed on simply securing Champion s League football this season, rather than making any realistic attempt to win the league… oh I am such a cynic!

The fair to middlin’

There isn’t a huge amount note amongst the middle ground really.

However one team sticks out like a sore thumb.  Everton have managed to score ten goals in only six games against the big guns – far and away the best in the league.

If you are annoyed reading this that I didn’t post this before the Villa v Man City game and that you have missed out on the regression value, there is the heir to the throne.

Do you need me to draw you a picture?!

I would also note that both Blackpool and Stoke have a number of tough fixtures remaining, and as such there is still a small chance they could get dragged back towards the foot of the table.

Blackpool were 45 minutes from being announced officially safe in midweek.  But as it is, they are still in the thick of it.

And they don’t want to leave it too late to chalk up those magical 38th, 39th and 40^th points of the season.  Last day of the season?  A little trip to Old Trafford…

Down in the basement

All of the metrics look bad for Wigan – Literally every single one!  I cannot find a single thing to suggest they are going to stay up!

Wolves have managed to take six points from the big guns this season, and a further three from Liverpool.  There game against WBA in May can already be penciled in as one of those infamous six pointers.

Maybe we could introduce that as a wacky rule – every team gets to nominate one game a season that is actually worth six points.  I can only imagine the madness that would ensue.

Ah, finally Birmingham – my favourite topic of footballing conversation.  Actually, no, let’s not go there today.  I’ve already wasted 3,000 words and three hours on this nonsense as it is.

I’ll save that for the weekend…

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