West Ham United vs Aston Villa: Preview

Aston Villa go into this one on the back of 6 defeats in a row in the league, a goal difference of minus 14 in that time, and three away defeats in a row.

No brainer, right?

It would by very typically West Ham for us to lose to Aston Villa on Saturday. In the 20-odd years I’ve followed the club it’s felt like a regular feature.

If Villa are to get something from the game, they would need someone to step into the void left by key players Christian Benteke – service the first of a three match suspension – and Fabian Delph – out until December with injury. In their absence, the key man for Villa is undoubtedly Austrian forward Andreas Weimann.

Weimann scored Villa’s first goal in 6 games last time out against Tottenham to take his tally for the season to 3 in 10 games. Hardly prolific, but it is Weimann’s all round game that makes him the main threat. Not only is he Villa’s top goalscorer, he has also had more shots than anyone else, and only one Villain has created more chances than him this season. The image below shows the assists and chances created by Weimann this season.

Perhaps the element of his game that deserves the most praise though is his workrate. Only two Villa players have won more tackles than the Austrian this season, and it is not unusual to see him hassling and harrying defenders and midfielders in possession, and also working back down the flanks to support defensively.

Weimann’s style of play is actually reminiscent of West Ham’s in form strike partnership of Enner Valencia and Diafra Sakho, both combining an attacking threat with electric pace and serious defensive graft. The images below shows Weimann’s tackles and heat map from the game against Hull back in August. You can see that he gets all over the park, working right back to support his fullbacks, and not just pushing forward.

Obviously, Villa have lost a lot of games recently. In their defence, they have played a number of top sides and Spurs, so their record is in some ways defensible. Rather than look at their defeats to the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea, I thought I’d look at their losses away at Everton and Queens Park Rangers. Everton are a side West Ham are aspiring to be like, and QPR are a side that West Ham should be outperforming in most areas.

What both sides did effectively against Villa is stop them having any time on the ball by defending from the front. The images below show both side’s tackles in the game. The left shows Everton, and right shows QPR. You can clearly see that both sides pushed high up the park, putting pressure on the Villa defence.

And the next pair of images show both sides average position map.

Again, you’ll notice that both sides have an almost identical style. Both fullbacks (#23 & #3 for Everton, and #14 & #13 for QPR) push very high up the park. There are two central midfielders (#18 & 16, and #20 and #30) sitting deep, and then a central front three (#21, #10 & #20, and #10, #9 & #25). Finally, both sides have a ‘spare’ player (#14 and #24) operating slightly wider than the rest of the midfield.

Both of these formations are similar to the diamond that West Ham have been operating with. I’ll take our home game against Manchester City as an example.

Jenkinson and Cresswell pushed high up the park, Noble & Song sat in the middle, Downing, Sakho & Valencia acted as an advance front three, and Amalfitano was the ‘spare’ man.

Continuing in this vein should be the order of the day for West Ham. Pushing high up the park has proven effective for two of Villa’s recent conquerors, and if we perform as we can, we can make it a third.

Aside from the fact that they are struggling in front of goal at the moment, I think Villa have an obvious weakness that opposition managers have been exploiting.

I’ve already spoken about the fact that Everton and QPR pushed up the pitch and hurried Villa’s defenders. It isn’t particularly unusual for Everton to approach the game like this, but it was a definite change in approach from QPR.

I think the reason Harry Redknapp altered his side’s approach is because Villa are one of the poorer sides in distributing from the back.

This season, Villa have the third worse pass accuracy for defenders only, with their defenders completing just 76.8% of their passes. This isn’t a horrendous rate overall, and is actually only just short of their overall success rate of 78%. However, you would tend to expect defenders – particularly centre halves – to have a decent pass completion rate. The league average for defenders is currently 82.5% completion.  The image below shows a chart of the pass completion for defenders only.

What makes this statistic particularly worrying for Villa, is that their defenders attempt an average of 131 passes per game this season – and have actually attempted 37.1% of the overall attempted passes for the side.

This suggests that their defence has a fair chunk of the ball, and that there will be opportunities to nick possession from the high up the park – be it via tackles, interceptions or blocks.

To be honest, I hate games like this.

It’s not often we are expected to win, and coming up against a side in such poor form makes us the clear favourites. In years gone by, this would be an obvious banana skin for West Ham. This season? Maybe not.

But doesn’t that extra dose of hope, optimism and expectation just make the fear in the pit of your stomach swell? You can’t have been a Hammer for long if it doesn’t!

For match stats, visit my personal West Ham dedicated blog.