Aston Villa - Manchester United

Ah, finally back to the Premier League! I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of international friendlies, just seems like a waste of time and puts additional stress on the players and there's always a chance of them returning injured.

Great performance today, looks like LVG's philosophy is finally getting through and our team chemistry looks good. We're still a work in progress but as long as there's progress, I'm happy.

1) Does Blind/LVG read this blog?

Just joking but Herrera's first goal was extra special for me because I spent two previous posts writing about him being in that spot and not getting the pass from Blind. The Liverpool game, second point ("Blind ignoring the midfielder as a left back") and the Tottenham game, first point ("The effect of playing with a tall man").

I circled Blind and Herrera. You see Herrera is wide open for a pass and instead of forcing a cross, Blind ends up making a short pass to Herrera who shoots it in.

Here's the two pictures from the two previous posts showing the exact same scenario but Blind opts to cross it instead.

This goal that Herrera scored has been at least 2-3 weeks in the making and although it was Herrera's brilliance, I have to give credit to LVG and the backroom staff as they clearly saw this through video analysis and fixed it.

2) Again, Valencia is the weak link

I actually think Valencia did a pretty good job and played well today but as our team plays better, I have less to criticize and I find that most of the things I notice end up being Valencia's mistakes.

Example 1:

Aston Villa sends a long pass forward and Valencia is dealing with it. It's kind of at an awkward height for him as it's bouncing but the ideal area for him is to just kick it somewhat hard into the giant blue circled area. If he kicks it too soft, Smalling will deal with it and if he kicks it too hard, De Gea will deal with it. There's no one near the blue circled area so there's a lot of room for error.

Instead, he goes for this ridiculous flick pass behind Smalling and you see in the picture below, Smalling has to turn around and chase it. Nothing really happened from it but you can see the Aston Villa player was close enough to the ball to cause some discomfort. 

You never want to cause an uncomfortable situation or go for a risky flick pass, especially one that's directed back to the center of the pitch. 

Example 2:

Here, the Aston Villa player is dribbling it forward down our right side and Valencia is defending him. In Valencia's position, he has two choices 1) make a perfect slide tackle and get the ball cleanly 2) don't step in and force/keep him out wide and block the cross or the cut back.

Valencia isn't a natural defender and he has plenty of pace and strength so that second option is easily the best one. However, not only does he not pick the second option, he instead goes for the "in-between" option - he makes a half hearted tackle because he's too scared to give away a penalty and the Aston Villa skips past him easily. 

I hate picking on Valencia as I think he's a great professional and a great person to have on the team but he just keeps making awkward mistakes that stick out to me. Also, if you look at the rest of the picture, our entire defense is a mess. That's my next point.

3) Defensive mess

Rojo is probably our best center back but both him and Jones are athletic based players who tend to defend with athleticism and instinct rather than with intelligence. They both tend to make rash decisions (obviously Jones much more so). 

Rojo and Jones are circled in blue and Valencia and Blind are circled in red in the below picture. Do you see something wrong with that? Fullbacks having to go central to cover for center backs being out of position is just awful. In a standard back four, the fullbacks should be slightly ahead of the center backs as they have more attacking duties and technically, the players they're marking at the opposition wingers who are in midfield as opposed to the opposition strikers. They simply shouldn't be in this position shown below.

The way this happened was that Rojo was too aggressive trying to get a defensive header over Benteke (who's probably at least 20lbs heavier and has a few inches on Rojo) and missed the header. Benteke flicked it forward and then Jones rushed forward to attempt a tackle on the Aston Villa player who was dribbling it forward instead of just defending him. 

Remember Vidic? First, he wouldn't miss a defensive header - if he was going for it, no one was stopping him. And second, if somehow he did, Ferdinand would be there to cover for him instead of foolishly rushing forward and getting dribbled past. 

4) Still too clustered, spread out!

From what I've read, I'm fairly certain that this isn't an intentional thing as LVG seems to like to use all the space available on the pitch. I think it's just an ongoing tactical discipline issue that we're working on. I've mentioned this several times before (here's one example, the second point from Tottenham game "defensive issues, overcrowding").

You see below, Blind is chasing the ball and Herrera is right next to him with Rooney standing there watching, only 5 feet from Fellaini. At this point, neither team really has control of the ball so our team should be prepared for anything. You can also see that Carrick (top left of the picture) has dropped back to cover for Blind. Herrera and Rooney should both be at the position of where I drew the blue arrow instead. That way, if we get the ball, then Blind has plenty of options to play a pass to (Herrera would be wide open in the center of midfield). If we don't get the ball, then Herrera would be able to intercept or at least block any pass that goes towards the Aston Villa players on the left lower side of the picture.

End result, Aston Villa gets the ball and the Aston Villa player has a ton of space on our right side due to Herrera being out of position and our players have to sprint and scramble back.

It's not only just smarter positioning - if Herrera was properly positioned, it would have saved him a lot of running. I think that's the kind of positioning he was referring to in his interview when he said LVG didn't play him due to tactical disciplinary reasons.

5) The switch to (almost) 5 man defense again

Again, this is a recurring "problem" as I've mentioned it multiple times. I put "problem" in quotations as I'm don't really think it's a bad tactic especially since we're up a goal but our team never really plays well with a 5 man back line and it seems to invite pressure on us and nullify any attacking threat we have.

This is a moment at the 50th to 51st minute and we have firm possession of the ball. It's the second half and we're up a goal. That's Carrick that I circled in red. You notice that he's pretty much the deepest player here and there's no one occupying the blue circled area that he left  open by dropping so deep. 

This is during the 26th minute of the first half. That's Rojo circled in red with the ball as the deepest outfield player. Carrick, circled in blue is in the center area that he wasn't in in the above picture.

This was clearly a tactical change by LVG and not Carrick just drifting deeper. I personally don't like it but it's not a terrible thing to play a little deeper and more cautiously after going up 1-0.

Conclusion

I'm still undecided about Rojo and I think he might look good only compared to our other center backs who are worse (although Smalling has been really good). With him and Jones, it's just too much brainless aggression - with Smalling as his partner to cover for him, he looks okay. Vidic was an aggressive center back who would rush out and fly over attackers to get a defensive header but that was okay because he almost always got the ball. Rojo tends to do the same thing but he misses the ball quite a bit and it leaves him out of position. I didn't write too much on it this post, maybe save that for a future post but it's just something I've noticed when I watch him play.

Thanks for reading, I'm glad the Premier League is back on again after the international break!