How Close-Range Goals Have Made Aston Villa’s Title Challenge More Sustainable ...Middle East

Aston Villa had lent too heavily on long-range goals for much of this season, but their last few wins, which have taken them up to third, have been built on higher-quality chances.

As the weeks go by and the wins pile up, it has become increasingly difficult to deny that Aston Villa are in the title race.

And after their latest victory, perhaps it’s time to accept it. Maybe Unai Emery’s men really are contenders.

With the greatest of respect to their most recent opponents, beating West Ham away isn’t exactly the biggest achievement, but the manner of the win and the wider context of Villa’s recent form make it more significant.

They recovered admirably in the face of adversity, twice coming from behind after conceding cheaply, firstly in the opening minute after Ezri Konsa had been easily dispossessed inside his own box and then again when Jarrod Bowen turned a Freddie Potts shot into the net from behind most of the Villa defence, but played onside by Konsa.

There was no panic. No lumping the ball forward. No sweeping changes at half-time. Villa have good reason to believe in what they’re doing and they stuck to their guns.

“Two times, we [went] behind,” Emery said after the game. “How we came back, in that moment, those goals, I think, is fantastic, because we were getting balance, even losing, and keeping our gameplan, like we planned before the match.

“And in the dressing room, we were speaking about it. Keep calm, focus again [in] the second half, the gameplan.”

It worked, and they extended their winning streak to six games, making this the longest run of wins Villa have ever enjoyed in the Premier League. In all competitions, they’ve won nine in a row, with three straight Europa League wins taking them up to third in the league phase of that competition.

It is quite the change from late September, at which point they had made their worst start to a league campaign in 28 years, with just two points and zero goals scored after their first four games.

But they have more than turned things around since. A loss at Anfield on 1 November aside, they’ve won every league game since late September’s comeback against Fulham. It is the first time Villa have recorded 10 wins from an 11-game run in the Premier League, while the last time they managed it in their top-flight history was 1920.

Their form has catapulted them up the table and they now find themselves in third place, just three points off Arsenal in first place. The Opta supercomputer now gives them a 6.4% chance of winning the title; it’s not a huge chance, but their form shows they absolutely deserve to be in the conversation.

There are a fair few cautionary tales that should be taken into consideration, though. Plenty of teams in recent Premier League history have gone on as good a run but fallen short of winning the title – sometimes a long way short.

Arsenal did it in 2023-24 and finished second. Liverpool did so in 2021-22 and were also runners-up. Leicester won 10 games from an 11-game run early on in 2019-20 to go second, but fell away to finish fifth. And those are just some examples from the last five years; Villa’s run is actually the 220th instance of a team winning at least 30 points from a possible 33 in Premier League history. Many of them have failed to win the title. There are teams in the list like Tottenham, Leeds and now Villa, who have never won the Premier League.

So, what reason do we have to believe that Villa’s current purple patch could be different? Why might this prove they are contenders, particularly considering that only a few weeks ago on these very pages, we raised some questions about how sustainable their form was.

Look back

Aston Villa and the Art of Defying Expected Goals, One Screamer at a Time

That was based around the fact that Villa were scoring so many long-range goals. They were up to fourth in the table when we wrote that article despite having the second-lowest xG in the league, ahead only of Burnley. The average xG value of their shorts was lower than that of any other side.

But at that point, they’d won seven of their last eight. It wasn’t hurting them at all, because they kept on finding the net from distance. They didn’t require high-quality chances or lots of xG.

It meant that Villa were way down the expected points table in 19th, because their xG data suggested they didn’t deserve to have earned many points. They were winning matches despite being dominated in xG terms.

We wondered at the time about the possibility that Emery was choosing to harness the fantastic long-distance shooting ability of his squad. They have scored more goals from outside the box than any other team in the Premier League this season (10) and are on course to break the seasonal record (23 by Chelsea in 2006-07) at their current rate of 0.63 per game – the highest in Premier League history. Their 10 goals have come from just 42 shots – a remarkable rate of 23.8% conversion.

It was unlikely to be too deliberate a ploy, though, because every team these days tries to get the ball close to goal before shooting, and the evidence since has proved that to be the case for Villa.

In their very next game, they scored four goals in a dramatic win over Brighton, all from inside the penalty area, with three of them coming from inside the six-yard box. A few days later, they beat Arsenal with two goals from inside the box.

In those two games, they had six and five big chances, repsectively, having had no more than two in 12 of their 13 previous matches, and only three in the other. Against a good side in Brighton (2.41) and the league leaders in Arsenal (2.16), they posted their highest xG numbers of the season so far.

Against West Ham, they weren’t anything like as creative, managing just 0.67 xG, and only one big chance. And again, they required a goal from distance to win it, as Morgan Rogers scored his third from outside the box already this season, more than any other player.

But this wasn’t like the wins over Manchester City, Wolves and Tottenham, or the draw with Sunderland – games when all of Villa’s goals came from outside the box. In this game, they were still able to create decent opportunities and scored twice from inside the box before Rogers’ winner.

It was also an impressively resolute display. For just the second time in their Premier League history, Villa won a game having fallen behind twice, with the only other time coming back in September 2013 at home to Man City. The mark of a team who fully believes in what they are doing, you might say.

Getting the ball into wide positions to put crosses into the box appears to have helped them. They have scored six open-play goals within 10 seconds of putting a cross into the box in their last three games (2.0 per game), having scored only one such goal in their previous 13 games this season (0.08 per game).

Playing John McGinn on their right-hand side has been key to that. He has put in more crosses (21) in Villa’s last five games than any other teammate, closely followed by right-back Matty Cash (17), who has benefitted from the left-footed McGinn, who likes to take up central positions – given he is actually a central midfielder – coming inside.

That has helped them create more and better chances. After losing the xG battle in their first five Premier League games of the season – picking up just three points in the process – and eight of their first 10, they have won it in four of their last six. That has meant they have crept up the xPts table to 16th, with results reflecting their underlying data slightly better of late.

Looking at their six-game rolling average xG over Emery’s reign shows just how unlikely their rise up the table at the beginning of this season was, with their xG against significantly outweighing their xG for across most of the campaign.

However, in the last couple of games, the xG they have generated has gone above that at the other end. Performances have improved and that is reflected in the numbers.

Their xG per game is up to 1.7 in their last three games from 1.2 in the previous 13, but most significantly, the average xG value of each shot they have attempted has almost doubled to 0.15, having been 0.08 before this recent run.

And on top of creating more and better chances, Villa can also still fall back on long-range strikes, as they did on Sunday from the sensational Rogers.

So, while they defied expected goals for much of the campaign and rose up the table in the process, they now appear to be putting in displays that are more worthy of results. What they are doing now looks more sustainable than earlier on during this record run of wins. Combining their long-range ability with more consistent chance creation is only going to aid their cause.

The big question is then what this all means. Are Villa genuinely in the title race?

Up against both Arsenal, who have looked largely unbeatable for much of the season, and a resurgent City, who have been in this position many, many times before under Pep Guardiola, Villa are up against it. There’s every chance they will fall away, but they may benefit from knowing that is exactly what is expected of them.

There is no expectation that they will keep pace at the top. And they don’t have to contend with the scars of three years of failure distracting them like Arsenal, who appear to be wobbling ever so slightly. They also have the benefit of playing in the Europa League, where they are able to rotate a little, rather than the Champions League.

“We are not feeling under pressure,” Emery said after Sunday’s win. “We are feeling ambitious and we try to challenge in Europe and in the Premier League.”

But there may be a worry that this brilliant Villa side prove nothing more than nearly men. Three points off top spot and clearly able to beat anyone on their day, this is a huge opportunity.

Of managers to have taken charge of 100+ games at a club in Premier League history, Emery has the 12th-best points-per-game-rate (1.85). Of the 11 ahead of him, eight have won the title with that team, and the others are three of the best examples of teams that really should have won the Premier League: Mikel Arteta at Arsenal (1.97), who might yet win the title this season, Rafael Benítez at Liverpool (1.90) and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs (1.89).

The challenge for Emery is to prevent his Villa side from joining that list as one of the best sides never to win the Premier League.

They may not get many better chances to do that than this one.

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How Close-Range Goals Have Made Aston Villa’s Title Challenge More Sustainable Opta Analyst.

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