Emery is back to his xG defying ways
Aston Villa have an impressive points haul under Unai Emery but this appears to be built on a foundation of sand
The above tweet was making the rounds yesterday and it caused me pause, I think of Aston Villa as pretty good but I had not noticed that they were playing especially well. This caused me to take a look at the numbers a little deeper.
First, I was pretty high on Aston Villa before the season picking them to be among the best of the rest but I certainly didn’t expect them to pick up the third most points over a 16-match run.
Second, I think that there might be an error in Amazon’s points counting. When I looked things up it looks like Unai Emery’s first match as Aston Villa manager was on November 6th, winning 3-1 against Manchester United. I have counted all matches in that match week and get the following table from Whoscored.
It doesn’t really change things that much, they are further behind Arsenal and no longer second but are still on a very impressive 31 points and 2 points earned per match.
So is this sustainable for Aston Villa or is this another bit of smoke and mirrors like the great unbeaten run at Arsenal?
My money is much more on that this team will not continue to earn points like a top 4 team if they continue playing with this same level of performance.
In this period on goal difference, Aston Villa are tied for 5th best, on xG difference, Aston Villa are just 12th best. Looking at the individual matches it is very much looking like a story of a team that is riding high on luck.
It is a story that Arsenal fans should be familiar with. This team is winning points but it feels like it is a high wire act for them based on going ahead first. This Aston Villa team is doing a lot of similar things that we saw eventually turn against Emery at Arsenal, where they are inviting pressure and having teams pretty significantly outshot in many of their matches, where the margin for error should the team not go ahead made it very hard to earn points, and to invite potential wins to turn into draws and losses.
In this run of matches with the score tied, Aston Villa have gone ahead 15 times, they have scored those goals from 9 expected goals. On the conceding side, they have gone behind just 5 times for 8.5 expected goals.
In close matches they are getting pretty much all the breaks going their direction, in matches that are “close” within 1 expected goal for or against, they have picked up 20 points, in these matches they have a goal difference of just +2.3 and +0.2 per match.
I don’t have any animosity against Emery, I think he’s a solid coach, I do think that there is a significant ceiling on his conservative style of play. Maybe this will be perfect for a team like Aston Villa, when he can get his team scoring first he will pick up points pretty well but over the long term if there is any sort of bad luck the style will limit the team from being able to overcome variance.