As Aston Villa slowly progress through their pre-season tour, the team is shaping up to look more and more solid, though it would be foolish to make the suggestion that it is in any way finished yet.
After the Burton Albion game, there were signs that players who may have not got a chance under previous managers would truly be getting a clean slate to work off. It seems the only player who is exempt from this is Alan Hutton and, for many supporters, this decision may well be a welcome one.
In the pre-season games, even Barry Bannan, a player who has been chided by myself and a few other columnists for not being good enough, has turned up with a series of performances. So, given all that, we should all be excited, right?
Not quite. Whilst wins in pre-season are nice to see, they pose no relevant reference point for the team. Wins at pre-season level, without being disrespectful to our chosen opponents, bear no comparison to the Premier League standard.
That isn’t to say that these games don’t have a purpose – they obviously do – rather that the purpose they do serve is not synonymous with being an indicator for if a player is good enough for the league.
If we are honest, and I always am on here, the main reason why the pre-season friendlies are set up is fitness, followed shortly after by a need for a team to work cohesively. However, a team turning over MLS opposition are not necessarily ready for the Premier League, nor are players who excel in games again lesser opposition shoe-ins for the team either.
Decision Making Is Important – Just Ask Arsene Wenger
Myself and John Clark have talked many times in the past about the time available on the ball at the Premier League level. The league is notoriously fast, and having the time on the ball that a player might get against any of the teams we play in pre-season will not be anything close to what is required compared to even Reading or Southampton, never mind Manchester City or Chelsea.
Don’t believe us? Well then take the thoughts of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger when he discussed the time available on the ball at Premier League level:
It would be interesting for some people to go… come on the bench and to see how quick the game is because when I sit sometimes in the stands, you lose a little bit of the impression of the huge pace [of the game at Premier League level]
“What strikes me is you sit on the bench when the guy gets the ball – oh – you have a solution there. When you just think about it, the solution has already gone.
“That means if he has not seen the solution before, it is already finished for him [the player with the ball]. The speed of the decision making is something that strikes me the most [about what affects play]. You have no time available at all. And the closer you get to the opponent’s goal, the more that time is reduced.
For example, at the back, you have one to two seconds to make a decision. In midfield, 0.5 to one second when it goes well. When you go in the final third, it’s 0.1 to 0.2 seconds – maximum – to make a decision and that [the ability for Premier League players to make decisions in those timescales] is something exceptional, and the game is just getting faster and faster
Fans Must Take Wins With A Pinch Of Salt… For Now
It should come as no surprise that the time players have on the ball is limited when it comes to performing at the very top level in this country. Watch any other pre-season game and you will see Villa having so much more time on the ball than Wenger states, and how that time on the ball can illustrate why players may look great in pre-season but less so when we actually kick off.
Villa probably won’t see any kind of real idea of how the team are going to work until Villa play Nottingham Forest in early August. I appreciate there are people reading our site who are excited to see Villa play in the United States, but the MLS isn’t a real barometer, and I think everyone will know that in their hearts.
Pleased For Our Fans In The States
However, if I were an American fan then I would be delighted to see Villa play at a more local ground than when they play in the Premier League. Many of us “home grown” fans can take it for granted that we have games on our doorstep. Even the Newcastle game, one of the furthest we have to travel to, is nothing in comparison to the scale of the United States, something that our own Jason Chalifour will attest to as he drove from his home in Boston to Philadelphia for the game against the Union.
So the pre-season may not prove anything for the future just yet, but I am glad that our fans in the United States have had chance to see our team play in their own country. All that matters now is that we look forward to each game and to continuing good performances.
It is true that we can only play the teams that we have put in front of us, but bigger challenges face us as we approach the real start of proceedings. If we can keep expectation in check, and I believe we can, we have much to be happy about as the new season kicks off under far better circumstances than the last campaign.
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