After a weekend of familiarity with England crashing out of the European Championship, it would be predictable to act all forlorn citing that the team were unlucky – they weren’t – rather they got what they deserved.

With that brief interlude covered for the moment, I wanted to focus on tactical analysis in the site’s nascent Talk Tactics column. There will be time to discuss England in the footnotes.

This week’s analysis looks at our defence, long balls, and some of their purported capabilities when playing as they did last season.

As we are all well aware, the defence often resorted to type with long balls, more often than not down to poor decision making rather than managerial instruction. Sure, it may well have suited the club’s agenda to cite Alex McLeish as the sole problem at the club, but the future will tell its own story.

As well as the defence, I wanted to look specifically of the use of long balls to Gabriel Agbonlahor.

It was reported late last season that McLeish had asked Agbonlahor to start cutting weight as the striker-cum-winger had begun to lose his pace advantage via long balls. The reason for using Agbonlahor for analysis is his pace attribute is a key advantage when used against defenders. His pace has also meant that he was the only Aston Villa player to be within ten yards of aimless hoofed balls from the back.

Sadly for our beloved number 11, diminished pace from bulking up curtailed his opportunity to flourish, even though I understood why he did it so as “to not be another wiry Theo Walcott bouncing off John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, or some other big defender”. The below example will illustrate a Richard Dunne long ball that is on target:

In order for Agbonlahor to receive the ball, he often relies on the defender delivering a ball with which he can run on to. In a competition versus a flat footed full back, Agbonlahor clearly wins the pace battle, but with the Birmingham-born striker often requiring a second touch, at Premier League those seconds are easily sufficient time for even an average top level defender to catch up.

If Agbonlahor could just execute control, and get a shot away in those seconds, he would be a true top class striker, though his role as a winger makes his focus supply rather than finishing.

Notwithstanding the above points, many of the long balls pumped forwards have been lacking the correct weighting with balls dropping short or long. Below are two examples of the ball dropping in both situations – short, and long:

Ball Goes Long

When the ball goes long as the above example shows, Agbonlahor’s pace is insufficient to stop the ball before it is headed off by a deep lying defender, and a central defender moves in front of Bent to receive the pass after the opposition regain possession.

Ball Drops Short

When the ball falls short as above, it forces Agbonlahor to change direction, and also move backwards. Turning will take a second up whilst the opposition player will already be facing the ball putting the striker at a disadvantage immediately.

From these points, challenges arise. Firstly, Agbonlahor is not a winger. Whilst he has the pace and some other attributes of a winger, it is sad to see the Villa striker toil out of position, often made to look a worse player than he really could be in a more familiar role.

However with Agbonlahor appearing more profligate than rival striker Darren Bent when it comes to taking chances, it is fairly evident that Villa’s number nine will always be picked ahead of him.

Also, with Brett Holman arriving at the club this season, and Bent recently stating his desire to see Stephen Ireland playing behind him in the hole, combined with Charles N’Zogbia’s more natural abilities in wide positions, the signs seem poor for Agbonlahor’s long term Villa future. Villa’s attacking three behind the striker will, more often than not, pick themselves.

It would be totally unfair to blame Agbonlahor for Villa’s woeful season, or even for his position in this particular tactical strategy – receiving the ball from the defence – and this article doesn’t aim to do that. Villa’s problems need more in depth adjustment via changes to the defence – a reason why signings may well sit more closely in the category of “many but cheap” rather than “few but expensive”, so forget the idea of James Milner coming back, despite how teary eyed it may make some.

Villa’s need to get on to long balls is not needed if the team evolve to a shorter passing game, but this requires close technical ability, something that I have my fears large portions of the team do not have, and certainly won’t have with Lambert’s likely forced transfer policy.

Which is why, in my opinion, Paul Lambert’s first iteration of tactical structure will rely on the less technical counter-attacking style, with Agbonlahor’s pace probably working to the team’s advantage in the short term.

However, if Agbonlahor can not develop his own close control, pace alone may mean his tenure at the club will not evolve with managerial tactical advancements and, without dropping weight, even his pace may be a fading asset. With the player turning 26 this October, it really is do-or-die as otherwise the Birmingham born player may well find his career at Villa Park fading into obscurity.

This isn’t to say Agbonlahor doesn’t have pace, merely that without sufficient development of close control, that particular ability only works against slower players – faster player catch up before our number 11 has the ball under control.

Couple this with the face that top teams deploying full backs who have both control and pace, playing a striker wide as a winger can’t have much longevity in it, though it appears Agbonlahor is happy to adjust as and when the team asks him to do so simply because he loves the club and will do whatever he is told to the best of his ability.

Whether the player can maintain a team position once actual wingers are purchased is an issue only time can show. However, Villa must remedy the situation in the short term with two tactical changes.

The first is the use of less aimless long balls, or rather disciplining players to look for options rather than resorting to last gasp punts of the ball. This will, invariably, mean player acquisitions as, rightly or wrong, I don’t believe the team currently has the personnel to eradicate such poor judgment calls.

The second is that players must learn to use a range of passing via good positional play. Part of positional play is limited by two factors – athleticism and spacial awareness.

Athleticism is able to be drilled into players, with Villa’s youth being a prime set of clean slates with which Lambert can operate. Spacial awareness and the ability to know instinctively where to be with and without the ball is a lot more difficult to come by, and few of Villa’s young talents have this capability, at present at least.

Whilst Villa can claim a number of players who have spacial awareness, it is fair to say that they are in the minority, and will invariably be the first group of players who other teams will look to buy in the future as they did with the likes of Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, and James Milner. Supplementing current players will, therefore, be a long term project, and one that will sit hand-in-hand with the challenge of trying to keep hold of the core of the team for as long as possible.

Of course, whether Lambert can afford the “luxury” of owning ball players in the short term when many of his squad can not fit this philosophy may be the reason why the likes of Stephen Ireland or Charles N’Zogbia might seem like necessities – not because they don’t fit the Lambert style, but because they are actually too technically advanced for the current setup and, therefore, sitting somewhat incongruously by virtue of their abilities, incompatible with the players of the lowest common denominator (skill wise).

If this does happen, it will be in stark contrast to Gerard Houllier’s attempt at trying to change too much, too soon. However, if Lambert can transition successfully, then it will assuage the doubts of those who see an axis of Ireland, Holman, N’Zogbia, and Jean II Makoun as the foundations of a ball playing team. However, only success will prove whether sales, if they do indeed occur, will be met with long term happiness or frustrations. The future, as they say, is there to be written.

England Out To Much Predictability

As we all know England clung on to their Euro 2012 advantage for longer than perhaps may have been predicted by many before the start of the game. If it wasn’t for continued Italian profligacy, then the horde of Anglo-Saxon supporters may well have gone home at least half an hour earlier, with the Italians seemingly unable to convert chances to goals, one offside chance aside.

England, however, hung on like a terminal patient desperate for life with no consideration for that time’s quality. Wayne Rooney, often a menacing figure when draped in the red of Manchester United seemingly was more able to distribute England’s balls to Italian opposition as he was to pass to a team mate.

I lost track of the number of times his runs seemed to involve charging into a ball that was aimed for Andy Carroll’s feet as the supposed wonderboy of England’s current generation failed to replicate his form displayed at league level. Perhaps Rooney is this generation’s John Barnes – great for his club, less so for his country.

Of the manager, there was little that Roy Hodgson did do wrong with the possibly exception of deploying Jordan Henderson as his last substitute. With the sight of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain warming up prior to Theo Walcott’s introduction, thoughts of a deployment of the Arsenal player in a central role – as he did so well in against AC Milan in the Champions League – offered some hope to an often lacklustre midfield.

However, with Roy’s dice rolled on substitutions, the game was set to the background of a long and drawn out desperate clinging on to hope as England chances looked more like Villa’s play than Chelsea’s masterclass against Barcelona.

So it’s over, and to little fanfare. Indeed, this tournament was the first in living memory where the nation’s success was tempered with reality only to, ironically, slip away as the country started to believe. Oh fate, how cruel you are.

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