One of sport’s greatest truisms is that it’s easier to play at home than on the road. Unless you’re Aston Villa.
Why is this, I hear you asking? Well, I’ll tell you.
Playing at home means a few things, not least of which is a friendly, supportive crowd. Now, the crowd can’t actually do anything on the pitch (besides invade or throw things on it), so the effect is largely psychological on both the home and away side.
Which doesn’t mean it’s to be discounted. Far from it. Among the other reasons underlying this home/away paradigm is that traveling is more disruptive to routine, and a familiar ground is also psychologically reassuring. It feels like home. It is home. Without the Xbox, TVs, smartphones, iPads, and WAGs.
But in the NFL, and indeed EPL, while road games are “tricky” and there are “hard places to play,” these are excuses, in the end. Elite teams in the NFL go into domes with 75,000-100,000 fans screaming at them for 60 minutes (three hours of game time), and they go win when they can’t even hear themselves think. They pipe deafening music into practice all week to get players used to the noise and lack of verbal communication. You don’t win championships without winning on the road. And United and City and whoever else routinely do the same thing. Even if it’s ugly.
And so we have to ask why Villa aren’t as good at home as we might hope. This is largely down to the fact that in football, there’s a terribly cliched tendency to insist that playing home and away are two different things. They aren’t. Rather, they shouldn’t be.
Same game, same ball, same players, same goal. Villa aren’t elite, no. But we have to get beyond these tired expectations about home and away games.
But It Is Different
Yes, it is different. There’s actually more pressure at home. Why should this be? Massive crowds cheering support and cowing opposition, familiar confines and sight-lines. Regular routine without the hassles and disruptions imposed by travel. How does this add pressure?
It’s very simple. The home crowd wants results. They want to be entertained. They’d like to see goals, and not only goals, but goals derived from fluid, breathtakingly skilled football with an attack-minded focus. They pay money, the supporters, and they want something to cheer. Or they tend to turn.
Many will say this isn’t so. But it is, really. When you’re losing, any result is good. But once you start getting results dependably, the bar is raised. Being Stoke is fine for stabilization’s sake. But soon the desire for ‘good football’ rears its ugly head. And then it’s off with their heads.
As a result, we typically hear supporters saying that we should play something “attacking,” like a 4-4-2 at home, while playing more conservatively on the road. Which is the conventional wisdom we saw at the weekend, with Albion playing a lone striker in Shane Long, sitting deep, clogging the middle, and looking to counter.
Villa on the other hand were compelled, as it were, by some unspoken gentlemanly agreement to come out, attack, and take the game to Albion, pretty much playing into Albion’s hands.
But when Villa travel, we can go 4-5-1, the home team is apparently obliged to come at us, and we get to counter. Regardless of which setup actually suits each side based on its internal makeup, or which setup most effectively matches up one’s side’s talent against the other.
This all seems a bit daft.
If it works on the road, why won’t it work at home? Because the default agreement has the away team already playing that way? We can’t out 4-5-1 another 4-5-1? Are we not men?
It’s A Results Business
When some have asked why we can counter better on the road, all of the above is the obvious answer. The team, despite a roaring opposition crowd, are under less pressure. They can sit back, leave the magic-making to someone else, and just worry about the result. Lowered expectations mean anything will do, even a spirited loss.
Now, of course, Paul Lambert hasn’t exactly bought into this paradigm. He’s been playing two up front home and away.
Many applaud this constant attack-minded focus, and I can’t say I don’t admire the intent or the courage.
I also think it has a lot to do with drilling a base formation into the side, a base set of responsibilities, relationships, pairings and familiarity, and that Lambert wants to make this his foundation for the side. It’s “Plan A”. Maybe after Villa get this down we’ll see a bit more tinkering with the formation as needs must and we’ll see plans B & C evolve.
Of course, the same formation has different attributes depending the personnel, and Lambert’s been more than willing to tinker with that. Delph and El Ahmadi offer something different than Ireland and El Ahmadi. Or having Bannan or Albrighton in the mix. Gabby and Benteke are certainly different than Bent and Weimann.
Which ends up being best? We’ll see. Me, I’m thinking that Gabby and Benteke, once Christian finds his feet, might be the hardest-working and most threatening combination. But we’ll always need Bent’s knack for finding a goal. So there’ll be rotation if all is right.
The Twelfth Man
Everyone seems to acknowledge the significance of vocal support, but Villans at the ground seem to have a hard time getting behind the side unless we’re ascendant. It’s easy to sing when you’re winning. But it’s vital to sing when you’re not.
This is how 0-1 deficits turn into 1-1 draws or 2-1 wins. When the legs and lungs are burning, time is running out, and the opposition are refusing to break down, something has to inspire the players to dig deeper than their minds and bodies would generally consent to. The visceral impact of 35,000-40,000 voices pushing you forward…that’s what really constitutes the home advantage. Noise is energy. It’s a physical force.
So, it really is important to realize that we may not be playing our best formation, or the best formation on the day, and may be playing into opponents’ hands by going out with two up front and trying to take the game to them simply because we’re at home. It may not be going well, even if we’ve got 61% possession.
In other words, don’t sit on your hands. Don’t wait to be entertained. Become part of the proceedings and influence the contest. Will the team forward. It won’t always work, but it will do a lot more good than the alternative. And it might very well help us return Villa Park to a much more formidable place to visit.
Right. I’m off for a corned beef and pastrami sandwich with swiss cheese, cole slaw, and russian dressing on pumpernickel. If you’re ever in New York, or Philly, or Baltimore, do not disparage this sandwich publicly. It might be like flipping the bird to the wrong bunch of claret-and-blues on Green Street.
And I will dare to try a strawberry and bacon crepe with maple-syrup-infused whipped creme just to live dangerously and leave no stone unturned. Cause that’s how I roll. Damn the torpedoes. And the marmite.
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