Analysis: Aston Villa have an offside problem
Unai Emery has enjoyed a terrific start to life in charge at Aston Villa but a manager as good and as experienced as him will know that the World Cup break isn’t a time to take his foot entirely off the pedal.
While Villa’s players have no doubt needed a break before what is bound to be a tough second half of the Premier League season, there’s no way that the 51-year-old Spanish boss has stopped analysing how his side performed both in his three games in charge and also those before his arrival.
Steven Gerrard’s start to the season was abysmal and one of the main contributing factors towards Villa’s struggles under the ex-Rangers boss were continual offsides.
Villa fans have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Danny Ings and Ollie Watkins.
Individually, they are two brilliant strikers who’ve been capped by England and scored almost 100 Premier League goals between them.
We all know what they’re capable of when they’re fit and firing. But we’ve not seen that often enough this season with Ings, 30, scoring five goals in 14 Premier League outings this season – with four of them coming as braces in two games – and Watkins, 26, netting just twice in the same number of top-flight appearances.
Why are they struggling so much though?
One of the issues we’re looking at is Aston Villa’s offside problem.
According to stats by WhoScored, only Manchester United (2.4) and Newcastle United (2.3) have had more offsides-per-game in the Premier League this season than Aston Villa (2.1).
Villa, however, have scored just 16 Premier League goals compared to the 29 scored by Newcastle and 20 scored by Man United, meaning that while they’re getting caught offside more often, they’re at least scoring more often when they’re not being flagged up by a linesman.
Above, the graph shows Villa to be in the bottom-right corner when offsides-per-game and goals are considered in the Premier League.
If you’re in the bottom right, it means you’re not scoring many but are being offside a lot.
Bournemouth, for example, are barely offside and barely score while Manchester City are prolific goalscorers and have an average number of offsides per game.
Ings and Watkins are, unfortunately, two players of problem for Villa in this regard.
As per stats by WhoScored, Ings and Watkins have both been offside eight times this season, which is the joint-ninth-most in the Premier League.
Manchester United have a problem duo in Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes both being the same with eight each while most clubs just have the one player in the top 20 or so for offsides.
Is it a problem caused by Ings and Watkins moving too soon behind the line of defence? Is their positioning and spacial awareness bad?
Or are Villa’s midfielders not supplying passes to them fast enough or is this just a result of a counter-attacking style of play?
It could be a midfield or playmaking issue.
WhoScored shows that Villa have produced 7.6 key passes per game this season, ranking them 16th in the Premier League.
Douglas Luiz, Emiliano Buendia and Leon Bailey have averaged 0.9 key passes per game this season in the Premier League – Villa’s best.
Damningly, stats show that 86 Premier League players boast a higher number of key passes per game than those three.
It may be easy to blame Watkins and Ings for being offside too much but it seems pretty clear that the quality of the balls being played for them to feed off haven’t been up to scratch.
They’re embarrassing numbers and there’s no doubt Emery will be fully aware of the void there’s a creative black hole in the midfield he inherited from, of all people, Gerrard.
In other Aston Villa news, Alan Hutton has called on Emi Martinez to improve his distribution.