Team Focus: Is Tim Sherwood the Man to Keep Villa in the Premier League?

It’s not hard to see where the problems at Aston Villa lie. Their lack of goals have become a standing joke: Jasper Carrott did a gag in the eighties about his club, Birmingham City having a Month of the Goal competition, and when Aston Villa had to cancel their Goal of the Month award in October, it felt horribly like they’d surpassed him. It was only earlier this month that they finally reached Bournemouth’s tally for league goals scored in Birmingham this season. In total, Villa have managed just 12 goals in 25 league games this season and the surprise is not that they find themselves in the relegation zone but that it’s taken them so long to get there.

Villa haven’t scored in 15 matches this season, but they have kept a respectable seven clean sheets – the joint-eighth best record in the Premier League this season. Paul Lambert’s method at the beginning of the season was to try and shut games down, stifle the opposition and see what scraps his side could pick up. For the first four games it seemed effective as Villa picked up 10 points, but they’ve won only twice since then, and a change of tack to a more possession-based game did not work. Perhaps most crushing was the 5-0 defeat at Arsenal, when even the spirit seemed to have left the side.

Incoming manager Tim Sherwood should at least improve the goals scored. Under him last season, Tottenham averaged 1.8 goals per game, more than they did under either André Villas-Boas or Harry Redknapp, or under Mauricio Pochettino to date. They also conceded more, and the general sense was that, while he picked up more points per game than any of those other three (although Pochettino is slowly closing in), the laxity Spurs showed in games against higher-class opponents was a worry. Certainly it seems unlikely that anybody will ever accuse Sherwood, as they so regularly accused Lambert, of being too defensively minded.

There was also a sense at Spurs that Sherwood had been slightly fortunate. Shots per game, shots on target per game and pass accuracy were significantly lower than either of his predecessors. That’s a worry for Villa given shots per game is something they desperately need to improve, given they lie bottom of the Premier League chart with just 10.3 shots per game, just 2.7 of those per game on target.

That may require a little finesse and it’s not immediately clear that Villa possess that, but what Sherwood will surely do is switch shape to play a front pairing more often than not, which will alter how Christian Benteke is expected to play, rather than simply having long balls thumped at him. Villa were a strange side under Lambert, frequently going sideways and yet also registering 72 long balls per game, the fifth-highest tally in the division. There was a lot of sideways passing in Sunday’s FA Cup victory over Leicester City, just 149 passes in the first half going forwards; in the second half they became more direct - 181 forward passes going forwards. That suggested Sherwood had encouraged a more direct, more attacking approach, and it brought a 2-1 win.

What’s also notable about Villa’s stats is how few tackles and interceptions they make, which is particularly unusual for a team near the bottom of the table averaging 47.1% possession.17.1 tackles per game is the third lowest figure in the division as is 13 interceptions per game. Spurs, under Sherwood, saw tackles per game go up and interceptions go down, indicative perhaps of the “passion” he instilled in them: there was fight and desire and perhaps not the level of thought that would have allowed them to win the ball without risk of committing a foul.

Villa, certainly, need to have their passion rekindled. After the Arsenal defeat there was a sense that they might just subside this season. Sherwood brings overt enthusiasm, certainly by contrast with the dour Lambert. In the short term at least, that may be exactly what Villa need.

What do you think Sherwood will bring to Aston Villa? Let us know in the comments below