Lots of possession, plenty of tackles, no outfielders over 30 and Ron Vlaar super dribbler

The stats are back! Thanks as usual to the guys at AVFC Stats on Twitter for their excellent work (Link), but for those of you not on there, I’d thought I’d share them with you, because once again they make for optimistic reading.

To begin with we have this one:

‘Only Man Utd, Liverpool and Everton have averaged more possession away from home in the PL this season than Villa’s 56%’

Now this I like. Granted it’s only a small sample having only played two games away from home but this is hugely encouraging in my eyes. Yes it’s all well and good having the ball and creating little as we saw at West Ham, but against a good Newcastle side, we also looked more threatening in the final third. When you compare this to what we saw with McLeish last year, it has to be viewed as a step in the right direction.

If we start creating that little bit more, and get players like Bent more involved then we could be in for some good times. It’s nice to see players so comfortable on the ball, and hopefully it continues.

The next stat concerns Matt Lowton, who has made a promising start to his Villa career:

‘Only two other English players have won more tackles and interceptions combined this season than Villa’s Matt Lowton (19)’

The boy has done well since coming in, and it’s good to see the stats back it up. He is a more modern full back in the sense that he tries to get forward a lot, but it’s good to see he is equally capable from a defensive perspective. Of course it’s early days but if he continues in this manner then maybe he can earn recognition from the England set-up. Hell if he was a Liverpool player he’d probably already be there. Still it’s nice to see Lowton placing near the top in these important categories.

The next stat is an extension of the one we brought you last week regarding the youngest side, but it still adds further weight to just how young this new look Villa is:

‘Aston Villa are the only Premier League team yet to play an outfielder over the age of 30 this season. (Oldest – Bent, 28)’

It is exciting to see how much we’ve changed since Lambert has come in, and you can see in the players he’s targeted that he really seems to be going for the ‘young and hungry’ (almost a Villa cliché already!) player we hear so much about. Looking at the rest of the squad and I don’t even think there are many over thirty in the squad who could come in (maybe Dunne or Warnock) so you can see what Lambert is trying to do.

We’ll leave you with the Ron Vlaar gem, and it’s no real surprise because despite looking terrifying, he’s surprisingly adept on the ball:

‘Ron Vlaar’s completed the most dribbles in the PL this term without being dispossessed when attempting to round an opponent’

So random it’s brilliant!

UTV.