First, let’s trot out some simple footballing concepts:
1) You can’t lose if you don’t concede
2) You can’t win if you don’t score
3) You can’t lose if you outscore your opponent
4) You can’t win if you don’t outscore your opponent (edited for superbox)
You’ll all know how to read those into Sunday’s match.
With that in mind, let’s get to what surely must be my eagerly anticipated article following Aston Villa’s defeat to Manchester City at Villa Park, wherein it is presumed I will attempt to deflect blame from Alex McLeish and onto the players, then the fans, the stewards, the service staff, and parking attendants. Concessionaires outside the grounds will be spared. (And yes, B6, it is, unfortunately, a bit long-winded. You might want to get a fresh cup of tea or coffee.)
First, I will agree with anyone who says that Alex McLeish set his team out defensively. However, what was defensive wasn’t really the personnel…it was the way they were obviously employed.
I’m going to base that assertion on the fact that it seems McLeish decided to sit Stephen Ireland and Charles N’Zogbia because of what was said during and after the Newcastle defeat, ie, that it wasn’t a tactical decision. It’s certainly possible that McLeish was taking the fig leaf offered by their actions to field the lineup he did, but it seems a bit of a stretch, insofar as neither Marc Albrighton nor Emile Heskey offer significantly more defensive cover. I suppose Heskey might, and obviously he adds a bit of size and some hold-up ability, but it’s not like they’re two defensive midfielders by trade.
If we’re wondering why it was those two who replaced Ireland and N’Zogbia, I’m not really sure who else we’d put out there to play wide besides Bannan. And I don’t know many managers who’d start a midfield of Albrighton, Bannan, Gary Gardner and Stiliyan Petrov against anyone outside a League Cup tie. That’s a lot of youth, and it’s very lightweight and small out on the flanks.
Carlos Cuellar replaced Stephen Warnock at left back, and I guess that’s defensive insofar as Warnock was being sat down again for not being good enough at defending.
The Defensive Bit
As I say, the defensiveness wasn’t in the personnel, then…that was “enforced”. But we were defensive in that we were clearly sitting deep and looking to counter. And we were fairly narrow about it, too. The idea clearly seemed to be that if we were going to get beaten, it wasn’t going to be from City cutting us apart through the middle. Rather, it seemed that McLeish was more comfortable letting City have the ball wide, which isn’t insane given the size advantage Villa had with David Silva and Aguero leading the attacking and goalscoring options for City.
The commentators on TV alternately praised Villa’s defensive performance while criticizing the lack of attacking intent, with one observational gem being, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if Villa committed to attack more, it would then open up counterattacking opportunities for City.
Sounds good for a neutral, but not so good for Villa. “If Villa just attack more, the billion-pound team of superstars will have more opportunities!” Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that.
Now, a person can argue that the best form of defense is offense…and it certainly can be. And I can certainly understand the whole have-at-them thing. I can also understand another approach, wherein you take away what the other team excels at. Which, in this instance, obviously meant cutting down the quick, skillful play by packing the middle.
Cowardly? Only if McLeish really did sit Ireland and N’Zogbia to put out more defensive-minded players. For me, this wasn’t the same as the tactics he chose against Spurs. It might’ve ended up looking like it, but I don’t think it was.
And, despite a few shaky moments, it actually worked well enough. Yes, City were timid and hardly in high-flying form. Yes, we did have more trouble handling them when they took it up a gear. Yes, we did essentially sit deep and concede a lot of possession and space.
But it was 0-0 at the half, which is where McLeish would’ve wanted it to be, a close, cagey affair you try and nick at the end. McLeish obviously didn’t want to get into a wide-open attacking game from the off, figuring, and rightly so, in my opinion, that the odds in such a game heavily favor City to score more.
As matter of pure tactics, I can’t say I have a huge argument with the approach. Not exciting, no. But generally I care about results first.
Where McLeish Got It Wrong
If it’s true that he was making a point and disciplining two of his most dangerous and effective players (of late, anyway, besides the departing Keane), it was actually a fairly brave decision, given the opposition and circumstances. And perhaps McLeish thereafter hedged his bets a little by having the side he did field play so defensively. Maybe it allowed him to look brave while being cowardly. Maybe we’d have tried to play the same way no matter who was selected.
Villa did show too much respect (which is the kind way of saying we were passive and timid). Once again, a team with superior talent also showed superior heart and hustle from the outset, pressing and closing down far more assiduously than Villa. Setting yourself out negatively doesn’t also mean that you can’t press, harry, deny and contest possession. In fact, it probably works better if you not only sit deep but also doggedly put them off their game and keep them from getting comfortable.
Is this the players or McLeish? Well, I’ve asked that all season. And I’ve asked it in preceding seasons, too, which is why I generally point to the players first. Though I do understand that people will say it’s McLeish’s responsibility to get them fired up and following instructions.
When the players have gone out and battled, we’ve generally looked much better overall. When they haven’t…well, “The Tottenham Game” has become synonymous with the “gutless and insipid” version of the side.
At any rate, it was 0-0, and if McLeish were playing for a draw, Villa were halfway there.
If he was going for a win, he was probably only ever going get it by holding City while looking for a late winner. When Villa score early against high-powered teams, it usually ends up meaning that we’re under siege (we’ve also seen this for more than one season) and ultimately concede more than an equalizer. Showing nerves on the road of late, City seemed just as willing to play it close to the vest.
But no matter how well it had gone to this point, however accidentally, what I wanted to see was Ireland and N’Zobia brought on by the 60th minute at the latest if the game were level. McLeish’s reluctance to take the initiative and change things up before we went down (or even immediately after we went down) was frustrating for me, too. And I know he’s followed that pattern before.
Given that we very nearly got two at the end once we ramped it up, it might very well have changed things in our favor, and personally, I would’ve liked us going for three at home, rather than trying to snag a point that might well be worth less than a better, empty-handed effort at winning.
The Broader Questions
As to what the result means? Well, not much, in the end. What’s obviously crucial is the stretch of games we have coming up, and the fact Robbie Keane’s spark will be gone. Away to Wigan and Blackburn, home to Fulham and Bolton. Depending on these results, we’ll either be looking fairly safe, or right down in it. They’re four winnable games. What we get out of them will probably be the defining mark of this team, season, and manager.
In terms of McLeish, based on what we saw with Houllier, I’d imagine that if Lerner was going to make a change he’d have done it already. But McLeish isn’t in hospital with serious heart trouble. I also suspect it will depend on what sorts of performances we see almost as much as the results. Getting the man-management right with Ireland and N’Zogbia is crucial. I really do hope for Villa’s sake that McLeish has gotten this right. If he hasn’t, it’s a cock-up—based on how they had been doing, and credit does go to McLeish in that regard with Ireland, at least—that can only speak to pressure and cracking under it.
As I said, I’m on record saying we’d been playing better overall lately, certainly not for all 90 minutes of every game, but for enough in each to be given cause for cautious optimism that the side were finally doing what needed to be done—sometimes, even more than cautious optimism. That was largely due to the fact we were pressing more, battling, winning and keeping possession, and playing some decent stuff up front as a result. Keane’s brace at Wolves showed that opportunities are there, but that we simply don’t have players who seize them.
That was all missing Sunday. It wasn’t quite as bad as the Spurs outing, but it wasn’t what Villa needed when there were some small things to build on, finally.
Right now, without the sort of knowledge Lerner will have of his own goals, standards, intentions, and measure of McLeish and the players, I’d have to say that while McLeish’s remit this year has been just to keep us up and get us through the cost-cutting, he’s not making a terribly strong case for being kept on even if he does pull it off (which I still think he likely will). I know others will see it more harshly.
The caveat is whether there’s a belief in the organization that the team can be made better as contracts expire and the older and/or inadequate players are replaced with younger, better versions on less or equal money. Or is the consensus coalescing around the idea that whatever their pros and cons and CVs, Houllier and McLeish have just not been able to coax the best out of what Villa have got?
I can certainly buy into the idea that someone else could come in and get more out of these players. We’ve all seen it happen somewhere. But I really do have trouble letting go of the idea that this particular combination of players would still look like this for almost anyone that Villa could likely get in.
Because at the end of the day, we have a set of defenders best-suited to sitting deep in a counterattacking side, and a set of midfielders and forwards who don’t thrive in that kind of set-up.
The Author
