Our new style of play

[pauliewalnuts]

It is difficult, but it's even harder to play long-ball with a striker like Gabby or Weimann.

Which is why I think we tried to play a counter attacking game, bringing teams on to us to try to get them in on the break. Clearly without much success but that appeared to me to be the general idea.

There is nothing wrong with counter attacking - look at Ferguson's Man United teams, for years they were absolutely lethal on the break.

The problem we have - which is the same limitation we had under MON, strangely - is that for us it has become the only thing we really tried to do. I wouldn't mind if we were particularly good at it, but we're not, and haven't been for ages.

I've lost count of the number of times I have seen TV pundits start talking about us, and the first thing they say is how dangerous we are on the counter attack. It just struck me as lazy and cliched. Yes, a lot of our goals came from counter attacks, but that was a reflection of it being the only thing we tried to do with any frequency, and us not really having any other way to score.

[tomd2103]

I'm up for the new style but I'd want to see 4231 and we need two to three more players to play in the three. The rest of the side is top half premier league for the most part. At the moment the options for the three are little better than championship standard

Yep.  I'm still convinced a quality attacking midfielder and at least one decent wide player would make a massive difference to the team.   

[martin o`who??]

Is what exactly??....

[dekko]

I'd rather see us having the majority of the ball and not scoring than having none of the ball and not scoring.  You tend to concede more under the latter system.

[Phil from the upper holte]

Passing the ball to a players feet is easy. Passing a ball into space encouraging movement is what Swansea, and othe good footballing teams play. We don't do that. That's the problem

Is the correct answer

[Monty]

Teams who can't counterattack obviously lack a crucial tactic, but it seems to me that this is the difference between a tactic and a strategy - and you can't have a general strategy that your team is going to counterattack against everyone regardless, because it's too reliant on the opposition. If you're playing Swansea, and they play with a high line and will come at you, then it's forgiveable to go on the counter, because there'll be space. If, however, you're playing almost anyone else, especially at home, then you'll have no idea what to do.

In fact, it's worse than having no ideas. Counterattacking is obviously direct, because there's lots of space to pass into and you don't have to be as pinpoint as when breaking down massed defences. If, however, your whole strategy is counterattacking, then you'll find that your team is so expecting to be direct that they completely lack patience, and, failing to adapt to the actual match situation, will do the most direct thing available to them - namely, chunting it long.

[Toronto Villa]

We also simply don't have the pace we once had to be effective at counter attacking. Under MON, we had players like Barry or Petrov or Milner who get the ball out quickly to the likes of Young, Gabby or Downing. Gabby is not as young or as fast as he once was and the others are gone. For a while we were lethal in counter attack coupled with a solid defence. If you have the right players for counter that can be your strategy. For the last 12 months certainly Lambert has tried to do this with slower and inferior players with the exception of the main striker who you could compare to Carew at his best under MON. It doesn't work and then when you make it the only thing you do and not recognize a need for change when it screams loudly at you, then trouble follows.

Now that he has changed, if Lambert really wants possession to work then he needs to bring in players that can not only retain and keep the opponent from getting it, but have players at the club that push the line higher up the pitch and in a variety of ways get the ball into the area. We are not only too slow right now, but we lack any real vision. The current players don't have enough ability to get the ball into Benteke, and in turn Benteke doesn't have players around him that can take some of goal scoring burden from him. The result is what we all see, and unless Benteke does something himself out of very little we just don't score and won't.

[sirlordbaltimore]

I think calling it a 'style' is going a bit over the top

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Indeed. I've already asked the Mods if they can introduce the word filter and replace 'new style' with 'passing'.

[adrenachrome]

Brum Mail

Aston Villa: Players enjoying Paul Lambert's new tactics, says Ashley Westwood

Stand-in captain says Villa players feel like they are progressing after recent tactical changes by boss Paul Lambert

By Gregg Evans

Aston Villa’s senior stars are fully behind Paul Lambert’s newly-introduced playing style.

The club’s first-team squad are said to be enjoying their football more than ever after the manager recently changed his tactics.

While supporters have questioned the ‘slow and sideways’ approach and slammed into Lambert and his team for their chronic lack of goals, the players are confident that a shift in fortune is just around the corner.

And despite the discontent in the stands, the spirit in the camp is surprisingly high ahead of the trip to basement boys Leicester City on Saturday.

Stand-in captain Ashley Westwood said: “The way we’ve been playing is really enjoyable.

“We’re keeping the ball and moving teams around the way that they used to do to us.

“We feel like we are progressing.

“It’s just about being patient now.”

Westwood operated in the middle of a back three against Blackpool on Saturday but was shifted into his usual deep-lying midfield position after half an hour as Villa controlled the game.

He says that the team are more comfortable dominating games rather than chasing them, and that opinion has been backed up by other top performers.

The general feeling from the team is that it’s only a matter of time before the real benefits are reaped, and in the meantime they’re happy to work on ways to make it more effective.

“What we’ve found in the last few weeks is that teams have come and sat off us,” Westwood continued.

“It’s tough to break teams down when they play like that.

“Even the likes of Chelsea and Man City struggle at times and when the top teams go abroad they have the same problems, too.

“We’ve got to be patient, keep moving the ball around and keep wearing teams out. That’s what teams did to us last year.

“We managed to do it against Blackpool in the end but that was only after we started moving the ball quicker in the second half.

“The last ten minutes we felt it was coming and in the end it did.”

Lambert will stick with the ‘new way’ at Leicester after already experimenting with the set-up away from Villa Park.

In the 1-0 defeat to Swansea on Boxing Day the claret and blues out-played their opponents and if goalkeeper Lukasz Fabiankski hadn’t been in such fine form that day they would have taken at least a point from the contest.

What’s important for Villa now is to start converting draws into wins to further distance themselves from the bottom three.

After the East Midlands trip Villa have a tough run of fixtures against Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea however there’s a feeling in the camp that those are the type of games that will suit the new style.

Westwood added: “It’s real tough when teams just put ten men behind the ball and sit on the edge of your box.

“I think the Liverpool game will be good because they will come at us.

“If we keep the ball off them the spaces will be there and hopefully we can create more chances.”

[Monty]

'If we keep the ball off them the spaces will be there'. No. No they won't. Not if you're just standing still and tapping the ball to each other on the halfway line.

[RussellC]

'Possession football' shouldn't be seen as a style, or a way of playing, it should be something that every football team is capable of executing during certain phases of a match. Ultimately the aim of the game is to score goals. Any game-plan has to have this at the forefront of a plan. At the moment our game-plan seems to keep the ball for as long as we can and hope that Benteke produces a piece of individual brilliance at some point during the match.

[supertom]

I'm sick of the players and manager rabbiting on about this "new style." It's getting on my tits. There seems to be a hideous air of acceptance guffing out of the fucking club that suggests everything is rosy at the moment. They're not the ones having to pay and watch this shit though.

Does being able to string more than five passes together really constitute a new style?

Bring me some goals, otherwise the whole bloody squad and the manager can shut their traps as far as I'm concerned. Of course Westwood is happy, he's stealing a living well above his ability.

[Monty]

The 'new style' consists of Lambert realising, after two-and-a-half years, that punting the ball up field isn't necessarily a sophisticated attacking strategy in the modern game ('modern' meaning 'since 1895').

There's another really awful phrase in that Westwood interview - “we’re keeping the ball and moving teams around the way that they used to do to us." I can't quite put into words how embarrassing that is. It makes it sound like they always knew they were being moved around with ease but nobody had any ideas, until recently Lambert had a light-bulb appear over his head and cried out 'Eureka! I've got it! We'll NOT lose the ball pointlessly! We'll PASS it to each other instead!'. It's horrific.

[pauliewalnuts]

'If we keep the ball off them the spaces will be there'. No. No they won't. Not if you're just standing still and tapping the ball to each other on the halfway line.

Exactly. Somewhat concerning to hear that sort of thing.

Like Lambert the other day "I'm not worried about the goals, they will come". Well we've had half a season already and they haven't been magicked up in any quantity, so I don't know what makes him think that.