I have to say about the weekend’s result that I was both surprised and not.

I’ve been packing up house, and so for the first time in I don’t know how long I’ve missed two Villa games on the trot. I do have the United match recorded at the girlfriend’s, but will I go back and watch it? Probably not. I saw the goals, the stats…I could fill in the rest.

How was I surprised? When I saw the early goals pop up on my phone courtesy of ESPN, I thought it was going to be another Chelsea. When I saw the final, I thought “thank god.”

Some were thinking this was a United side ripe for an upset. I was thinking “here’s a United side that needs to do something.” And they did something.

But at the moment I’m watching a replay of City and Arsenal. What am I taking from this?

The nature of quality, surely, and its basic components: speed, touch, vision.

(By speed I mean the pace at which the game is played, which is largely thought of as tempo, rather than individual pace. Touch is pretty much self-explanatory. Vision, likewise.)

All these things we could say Villa lack for whatever reason. I’ve said it before, but I think Villa’s biggest problem is in terms of speed/tempo, and then touch. Possession is just a bit labored. Which in the Premier League, means that it’s not happening fast enough. The tempo is off.

And touch is obviously a part of that of that tempo, or lack thereof. When playing or receiving the ball, you have to weight it and make it playable. When receiving, you have to control it deftly, quickly and assuredly. A heavy touch or a slightly wayward pass equal a turnover, or a player under pressure. Which usually ends up in an immediate turnover or a pass that’s intercepted. Taking and playing the ball have to give you a chance to do something useful with it.

What I was also seeing was even good teams can ship goals. Which was something one could also see as Spurs went down to LIverpool.

When I talked recently of Spurs’ trouble scoring from open play, this was the sort of thing I was thinking about. It wasn’t meant to “absolve” Villa so much a throw their “shortcomings” into a bit of context.

Spurs’ troubles are instructive, and simply go to illustrate that coaching talent and money do not always mirror the outcomes we think they should.

That Villa seem to be struggling to score doesn’t automatically equal a lack of footballing intelligence on the touchline. Likewise, Villa’s tightened defense have been better at damage control, despite some big injuries. I think if we’re going to criticize the team, we have to also acknowledge that mangers with better CVs than Paul Lambert are having trouble balancing the setups that score with the approaches that leave a side with a chance of getting a result in most games.

All of this is a long way of saying that while we’d all like some more veteran quality in the side, Lambert isn’t doing a bad job when it comes to setting up what he has in such a way as to give the team a chance to get something out of most of the games they play.

Can Villa be better? Undoubtedly. But still they haven’t conceded six in a single game, something sides with much more talent and higher expenditures have suffered so far this season. We might wonder about the football Villa are playing, or are capable of playing, yet it’s hard to dismiss the fact that if many consider the side so poor, the results indicate such a “poor” side is actually overachieving.

We’ll obviously see how Villa do over the holidays, a period that will have a profound impact on the season as a whole. But as I’ve maintained, what happens to Villa each week is less significant than the overall arc being drawn.

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