How Aston Villa Dominated Manchester City
Aston Villa produced the performance of the season with a stunning 1-0 win over Manchester City. With Unai Emery's team now firmly pushing for Champions League qualification, just how did they make the Premier League champions look so ordinary?
Transcript
00:00 Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and I don't know if you've heard about this
00:06 yet today or if you've seen it on the news or anything but Aston Villa absolutely monstered
00:12 Manchester City.
00:13 And I know people on YouTube like to exaggerate but that is not an exaggeration.
00:18 Statistically, stylistically, numerically, however you want to measure that game, Aston
00:23 Villa basically bent Man City over and...
00:26 So the question today is, how?
00:32 How does anybody do that to a Pep Guardiola team?
00:36 Well, like this.
00:38 Alright, so just quickly before I start, really big special thank you to Classic Football
00:43 Shirts who sent us this absolutely beautiful Bocas Juniors Christmas jumper but I don't
00:48 think it's going to work with the blue screen, that might be a bit weird so I'm leaving my
00:52 coat on so the video doesn't look bad.
00:54 It is, and I do need to start remembering to take my lanyard off, it is really, really
00:58 nice, they've got a whole range, a big collection of them, we'll leave a link in the description
01:01 below if you want one of your own.
01:03 Anyway though, Aston Villa, this Aston Villa, 11 players who are now immortalised in club
01:08 folklore for probably delivering, maybe this is just my outside opinion, but their best
01:14 win since returning to the Premier League.
01:16 I think that's fair.
01:17 But the main thing you need to know is this, Aston Villa sort of play a 4-4-2, that is
01:23 nominally how they set up, it's normally how they defend but what they do with it is just
01:27 really clever and inventive and a completely, completely wrecked man's day.
01:33 So the key thing here is the two wide players, last night that was John McGinn and Uri Tielemans,
01:37 we will talk about them a little bit more and what tends to happen is that the two central
01:40 midfielders, they sit a little bit deeper and these two players sit a little bit narrower.
01:45 Now as you may be starting to recognise from every single tactics video and every single
01:49 channel for the last 12 months, this looks not unlike a box midfield which some of the
01:53 bigger teams use to get numerical superiority in the middle of the pitch.
01:57 That's not what Villa have.
01:58 It is a box, yes, I can recognise the shape, but it's not a box midfield.
02:04 While other teams will use it to sort of retain possession and hold onto the ball and do things
02:07 nice and slowly, Aston Villa actually use it to break an opposition press and go really
02:12 quickly from back to front.
02:14 The goalkeeper, the defenders and the two central midfielders, they will hold onto the
02:17 ball, they will retain possession, they will knock it around and when an opportunity comes
02:21 out when they spot the pass, one of the two wide midfielders will float into the middle
02:27 to receive a killer ball.
02:29 And when one of these wide players does receive that killer pass, then either the entire team
02:33 can push up and they form this whole different attacking shape or, as will occasionally happen,
02:38 they'll catch them off guard and they've all of a sudden got space to do something really
02:41 quickly.
02:42 And this happened straight away in the game last night.
02:45 Aston Villa's very first chance, Pau Torres, you can see here, he's in no rush whatsoever.
02:50 He's being patient, he's happy to invite the press on, he's got loads of options around
02:53 him, but then John McGinn comes off the wide area into the central space, Torres sees him,
02:59 picks him out and all of a sudden he's got all this room to play in.
03:03 He gets turned away from John Stones and without even looking, just knows where Leon Bailey
03:07 is going to be, fires a ball into that space behind the Manchester City defence and Villa
03:12 get a really good chance of it.
03:14 And how, you might be asking, did he know Leon Bailey, who was supposed to be a centre
03:18 forward in this system, how did he know he was going to be all the way over on the right
03:21 hand channel?
03:22 Well, it's because you don't just have these two central midfielders floating inside so
03:25 they can receive the ball in the middle, it's to pose the full backs and the defenders a
03:29 real problem.
03:30 Do you want to go with them and abandon your flank or do you just want to let them receive
03:35 that in space?
03:36 And what Villa tend to do from there when another team takes the bait is either Diaby
03:39 or Bailey or whoever's playing up front with Watkins, they'll spin off into that area.
03:44 They'll receive the ball wide.
03:45 And if we just rewind it a little bit, John McGinn knew Leon Bailey was going to be there
03:49 because Uri Tielemans was here.
03:51 So that's why it's a really, really effective system.
03:54 And obviously Aston Villa are really good at implementing it.
03:57 But specifically, why was this thing kryptonite to Manchester City?
04:02 Well, the answer, rather unsurprisingly, is this box.
04:06 Like Aston Villa don't play the way Man City do.
04:08 They don't have four players there for the reason Manchester City do.
04:11 But by virtue of the way they do play, it meant they ended up matched up man for man
04:16 in that shape and in that area.
04:19 And this is the truly astonishing thing about it.
04:21 If we look at the four players Villa have occupying this space and then we just sort
04:25 of label up directly who they were playing against for Manchester City, man for man,
04:29 and I'm being deadly serious here, Aston Villa have better players in that situation than
04:35 Manchester City do.
04:37 Now just hang on just a quick second.
04:39 Let me explain.
04:40 Maybe you really, really rate John Stones and Okanji and Rico Lewis and Alvarez.
04:45 Maybe you think they're genuinely better players than Aston Villa have got.
04:49 It's a fair argument.
04:50 They just went and won the treble last season, but none of them, not one of them is a midfielder.
04:55 Now obviously Alvarez had a really good season being deployed from midfield.
05:00 Rico Lewis is one of these fullbacks you can come across into midfield.
05:03 John Stones practically played all last season in midfield, but none of them have what those
05:08 four Aston Villa players have.
05:10 And that is hundreds, hundreds of hours and hundreds of games under their belt in this
05:16 part of the pitch.
05:17 And what you get with that isn't just ability, it's instinct.
05:21 Like you know when to get on the ball and when to find some space, you know when to
05:24 speed it up and when to slow it down, when to take a touch and when to release it early.
05:29 Like being a great footballer who is good on the ball will help, but it does not replicate
05:36 years of experience.
05:37 And that's why Villa just ran them absolutely ragged.
05:40 Like the second really good chance they get, it's exactly the same setup to the first.
05:43 Torres is on the ball, he's being patient, he wants to try and play it through the middle
05:47 like he did last time.
05:48 But City, they're really panicked, they can't let that happen.
05:51 So they flood the centre of the pitch.
05:53 They're outnumbered them 6-4 in that area.
05:55 But that isn't good instinctive decision making.
05:58 It opened up a huge space out on the right hand side.
06:00 And as soon as the ball goes to the fullback, Bailey, who is once again holding a wide position,
06:06 recognises there's now loads of space in the middle because they've all swamped into the
06:09 centre of the pitch.
06:10 He begins a run straight into that space and were his touch better, he'd have been cleaned
06:15 through.
06:16 And pretty much just every single time Villa got the ball in the midfield, they were able
06:19 to do more or less what they wanted with it because the players they were up against in
06:24 that area weren't midfielders.
06:26 They had no idea how to deal with it.
06:29 And this is just a tiny little example, right, but a bounce pass is basically when you want
06:33 to go from player A to player B, but that passing route is blocked.
06:36 So player C recognises that the ball isn't for them, but can effectively form a little
06:42 triangle around the problem, drops really deep, hits the ball first time and you finally
06:46 make that pass via him.
06:48 You tend not to see it in this part of the pitch because even if you are man for man
06:52 in that situation, it's far more congested.
06:53 There's more players around.
06:54 If somebody does get pulled away, chasing somebody down, someone is normally there to
06:59 cover straight away.
07:00 But again, all those words I just said tend to only really apply when the people doing
07:05 this are experienced midfielders.
07:07 Coming up to the end of the first half, Aston Villa want to play the ball from player A,
07:11 who I think is Konca, to player B, who is Uri Tielemans.
07:15 Player C here, which is Kamra, realises this ball is not for him.
07:18 He's being tightly marked, but he has a quick look and he sees that the pass to Tielemans
07:22 is blocked.
07:23 So as any experienced bounce passer would do, he attempts to drop short to give them
07:27 a little indirect way of getting from A to B.
07:29 Now under normal circumstances, this shouldn't work because Alvarez here is easily capable
07:34 of cutting out any B to C pass that happens.
07:37 In fact, so obvious is it what's coming here that Manuel Akanji even shouts at him,
07:41 points at Uri Tielemans and tells him that's where the ball is going.
07:46 Akanji you see, is an experienced bounce passer himself.
07:49 He's seen this before.
07:50 But Alvarez, being a centre forward boy in a midfield man's body, is thinking only
07:55 about turning that ball over and getting a dangerous chance, so just ignores the instructions
08:01 and goes straight for Kamra.
08:02 Lo and behold, the bounce pass takes him straight out of the equation, forcing the City fullback
08:06 here to push up onto Tielemans to stop him running down the line.
08:10 Again though, not a problem here because City are 4 for 4, there's not really any way
08:14 out.
08:15 He's going to have to go all the way back to his goalkeeper.
08:16 Or rather, he would have to do that, yes, with this inexperienced central midfielder
08:20 here and not a floppy haired Spaniel with the scent of a sausage in its nose.
08:25 He chases the ball down onto Tielemans, leaving this glaring amount of space here and in the
08:29 process turning player C, who was only there to provide the bounce pass, into just a midfielder
08:35 with the ball at his feet and space in front of him.
08:37 And also, goes without saying, because City's backline is pressed so far up while all this
08:41 has been going on, Watkins is clean through and were he not to trot on the ball, would
08:46 almost certainly just get in and score.
08:48 So that is legitimately a goal Aston Villa should have had, purely because Pep Guardiola
08:53 put a forward in midfield and Villa did a little triangle around him.
08:56 But I mean, as for the actual goal, it's pretty much just the greatest hits of all
08:59 the stuff we've already looked at.
09:01 One of Villa's centre backs is just being patient on the ball, inviting the press, waiting
09:05 for one of his wide players to move into the centre so he can play the ball through, which
09:09 inevitably, eventually he does.
09:10 And I still don't know if this is like a really clever touch or if it just kind of
09:14 bounces off him, but either way, it does get there and he gets that straight through to
09:18 Bailey who is now standing on the right hand side, taking up the space he vacated.
09:22 But I'll tell you why, of all the chances Villa had, I'm glad this is the one they score
09:27 because it's not purely about the system.
09:29 They have actually got Bailey quite well marked on this side for once, but what he does is
09:35 he skins him.
09:36 He just, he turns Guardiola with his first touch.
09:39 It's just a good old fashioned doing.
09:41 And once again, he charges from the right hand space into a central area.
09:46 Villa have them 3v2 as they get into the final third and such is just the frantic disorganisation
09:52 of the game.
09:53 What's Ruben Diaz doing here?
09:55 Who is he pointing at and why?
09:58 There is no Villa player coming down the left hand side.
10:01 Who is he telling to watch that space in behind?
10:04 Villa had by this point in the game put the willies up Man City's defenders so much, they're
10:09 screaming for people to go and mark players that aren't even there.
10:13 But anyway, here we are, the actual moment of the shot and just look at the amount of
10:17 space he has with which to pull the trigger.
10:20 City have been pulled this way and that.
10:23 They don't know who's going with the runner, who's going with the man, who's going with
10:26 the space.
10:27 Villa's movement has just confused them so much.
10:30 City have three centre backs in close attendance and none of them can put an effective block
10:36 in against that shot.
10:37 No, in fact, all they can do is just dangle a leg out of it.
10:40 So by the time the ball travels through and hits that, it just simply loops up over the
10:44 goalkeeper and into the back of the net.
10:47 And yeah, of course, they were lucky with the deflection, but Villa could have got their
10:49 goal any number of ways.
10:51 This John McGinn one is my personal favourite.
10:53 You can see here so much, are City struggling to control this game.
10:56 They've even dropped Bernardo Silva from the right wing into sort of a nominal number six
11:01 role just to help them get on the ball.
11:03 This is something else we talked about in the Villa tactics video.
11:05 They don't go this narrow when they press, they try and stay as a proper 4-4-2 and Douglas
11:10 Luiz, his job is to sort of press into that middle area to stop teams playing out.
11:14 They kind of go to a bit of a diamond.
11:16 That's exactly what happens here.
11:17 Like as soon as the ball goes into Silva, he is on him like **** on Velcro and the pressure
11:22 forces him to lose the ball.
11:24 And it would have been nice if McGinn had got that goal, by the way, because I thought
11:27 he was the best player on this pitch by a f****** mile.
11:31 Like every single start I've seen in the last couple of hours, like he had the most dribbles,
11:35 he won the most duels and all this.
11:38 There isn't a metric that sort of measures how good you are at sticking your big arse
11:43 out to shield the ball.
11:44 But if there was, he'd have topped that as well.
11:46 And just while we're on the stats, some of the numbers coming out of this game are absolutely
11:50 incredible, given it was only 1-0.
11:53 That is the most amount of chances a Pep Guardiola team has ever faced, ever, like 22 across
12:00 the course of the game or something.
12:01 It's the most any team has won the ball back from them in the final third.
12:07 That's just mind blowing.
12:08 City's entire xG from that game, which I think is like 0.8 or something, comes from a double
12:13 chance they had in the 11th minute.
12:16 After that chance, their xG for the rest of the game is 0.00.
12:23 They didn't have one go a goal.
12:26 And one final thing I want to illustrate here, okay, this is Aston Villa's average pass map,
12:31 their average positions.
12:32 That looks to me like nothing particularly exciting or spectacular.
12:36 You can see here they were spread all over the pitch, they were getting in quite advanced
12:39 areas and as we've discussed, both their wide players play quite narrow and their other
12:43 striker plays quite wide.
12:44 Nothing there you didn't know.
12:45 And I show you it to highlight what a normal pass map should probably look like.
12:50 Okay, so you're looking at it, you're looking at it, retain that information.
12:54 This is City's.
12:55 You could legitimately throw an admittedly quite large blanket over their entire team
13:01 just sat in the middle of the pitch.
13:03 They could barely get out of their own half.
13:06 Now just to really want to hammer this point home, because I do these videos a lot and
13:09 I like to use these pass maps quite a lot.
13:11 You do quite often see teams that can't get past the halfway line, but when that happens,
13:16 their defenders are on the edge of their own box.
13:20 City's are only 10 yards behind them.
13:22 And what that shows you, what that really neatly illustrates is that last night Manchester
13:26 City were a team that were building out from the back, that liked to have controlled possession,
13:30 that would get the ball and try and move it through the middle of the pitch, but simply
13:34 couldn't.
13:35 Like that legitimately looks like a normal pass map that has gone head first into a brick
13:40 wall and is now squashed.
13:43 That is what Aston Villa did to them.
13:45 And I could go on and on and on and on like Watkins wasn't really in the chances, but
13:49 his movement was brilliant.
13:50 I think Martinez might probably be the best goalkeeper in the world.
13:54 I definitely think Douglas Luiz is the best number six in the Premier League right now.
13:59 Just this individual performances all over the pitch were great, but the system, how
14:03 it worked, how it absolutely beasted Man City.
14:06 I could not believe what I was watching.
14:09 Now I will say if you are a Man City fan, you've got all the way to this point in the
14:12 video.
14:13 This is not me saying you're certainly crap and you're not going to win anything.
14:15 You've got loads of key injuries.
14:16 I thought the selection was bad.
14:18 You look tired.
14:19 There's loads of reasons why your performance sucked.
14:22 And I think when you get some players back, you're not going to ever suck that much again.
14:26 But just this video, I just want to praise Villa because it's so easy when a really big
14:31 team gets beat by literally anybody else to just look at the problems they had rather
14:36 than giving the due credit to a team that did so, so, so much right.
14:41 So Villa, that's your win.
14:44 That's not Man City's loss.
14:45 Anyway, that is it for me.
14:46 If you have enjoyed this video and people seem to bizarrely, then please do consider
14:50 subscribing to us here at 442 on YouTube.
14:53 They're every single day, this stuff.
14:55 And my mom says they're good.
14:57 Thanks once again to the folks at Classic Football Shirts.
14:59 I'll just take the coat off at this point.
15:01 If the blue screen goes mad, then who really cares?
15:03 You can get your own beautiful football Christmas jumper from the link in the description.
15:07 Honestly, the range is absolutely mind-blowing.
15:09 You can get me on whatever your favorite social network is.
15:12 That's not really any of my business.
15:13 @AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y, 442Socials in the corner of the video.
15:18 That's incredibly uncomfortable.
15:19 But until next time, I've been Adam Cleary.
15:21 This has been 442.
15:22 Well done Villa!
15:23 That was fun.
15:24 And I'll see you soon.
15:25 Bye!
15:26 Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
15:26 Bye!
15:27 Bye, bye, bye, bye.
15:28 Bye! Bye!