The key Aston Villa stats that point the way to Premier League recovery after horror start
The good news? Aston Villa have 34 matches left in the 2025/26 Premier League season. The bad news? There weren’t many obvious signs in the previous four as to how they’ll be any better.
Villa can’t defend the way they played against Newcastle United, Brentford, Crystal Palace and Everton, or indeed how they played against Brentford for a second time, though I do think there were slight improvements there.
Four matches might not be enough to panic or to write off the season but there’s sufficient evidence to acknowledge that Villa are playing poorly and overdue a pretty forceful rethink. They’ve been underperforming so thoroughly that supporters are entitled to ask a few questions.
If it were easy to fix, Unai Emery would fix it at a stroke. So what is going on? What’s the actual nature of the problem? More to the point, is there a hint within it that presents some kind of solution or even a reason for optimism?
Well, not really. But let’s have a look anyway.
Villa’s nightmare in numbers
The obvious place to start dissecting a team that can’t score a goal is with the data that can tell us a bit about their attacking, their possession and their ability to create. By way of a comparison, let’s put a few key numbers up against those of a good team.
Villa last season should do the trick.
Villa’s numbers are appreciably lower across the board than last season. Four games is a dangerously small sample size but the eye test rather backs up the fact that Villa aren’t creating good quality chances or, obviously, taking their more difficult chances to compensate.
| Metric | 2024/25 (per 90) | 2025/26 (per 90) |
|---|---|---|
| Goals | 1.47 | 0.00 |
| Expected goals (xG) | 1.48 | 0.72 |
| Goals against | 1.34 | 1.00 |
| Expected goals against (xGA) | 1.32 | 1.82 |
| Tackles/interceptions against | 23.1 | 31.3 |
| Passes blocked | 9.11 | 10.3 |
| Dispossessed | 10.2 | 11.0 |
| Take-on success % | 45.0 | 33.3 |
| Carries into final third | 11.8 | 9.3 |
| Carries into penalty area | 5.6 | 3.5 |
The shortcomings of this team over four Premier League matches this season are both tactical and individual. We can see it and the numbers show it, but are there other clues elsewhere?
Villa are playing without much width or any risk. The individual expected goals (xG) value of striker Ollie Watkins is 0.28 goals per game. Last season it was 0.53 per game. He’s having fewer touches of the ball in all areas of the pitch and the only conclusion to that is that Villa can’t get their centre-forward into the game.
What comes through in the data is that Villa aren’t doing the things that make a difference often enough or well enough. Two facts on which to chew:
- Only Liverpool, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest have completed more passes into the attacking third but Villa drop way down the list when it comes to passes into the penalty area – and they’re in the bottom five for carries into the final third
- Ezri Konsa has the highest pass completion rate of any player in the entire league and only 10 of his 180 passes have been progressive passes, meaning passes that progress the ball 10 yards excluding from Villa’s defensive third (40%, actually, but let’s not split hairs)
This is a team that’s stopped taking risks but it’s also a team making a huge number of errors. Part of that must be on Emery. Part of it certainly isn’t.
Emery doesn’t have sole responsibility for Villa having the fourth-lowest number of successful take-ons, nor for only Fulham having a higher percentage of attempted take-ons ended by tackles.
Emery doesn’t have sole responsibility for Villa having more passes blocked than every team apart from Sunderland and AFC Bournemouth, nor that only Manchester City have been dispossessed more often.
That City are top of that particular ranking says a bit about how they’ve been playing but also suggests that it’s not disastrous for Villa in isolation.
In combination, though, these are indicators that begin to explain why Villa have a lower season xG (2.9) than everyone except Wolverhampton Wanderers only four games.
Painting a picture of the problem
Incidentally, Villa also have the second-highest expected goals against (7.3 versus Burnley’s 9.2) so we can’t even take solace in Villa having shut the back door at the expense of a gamble or two. They haven’t.
I think Villa’s results and stodgy performances are the outcome of a convergence of faulty tactics and a near-total lack of quality on the ball.
Villa players have been tackled or had passes intercepted 125 times in four games. That’s the highest number in the Premier League and they’ve averaged 56.8% of possession. This is a team keeping possession because of an ideology but unable to truly control it, or to harvest it, in execution.
It might be easier said than done but Villa’s problem is that they’re having lots of the ball and getting nowhere because they’re narrow, predictable and playing it safe. Fortunately, these are failings that can be remedied with the resources they have.
It sounds counter-intuitive to call for more ambition on the ball when we’re talking about a team full of mistakes but they need to pull themselves together on that front anyway.
The Villa player with the most progressive carries (carries that move the ball ten yards or more towards the opposition goal) is Watkins. That’s not a striker’s statistic. The league leader is Jack Grealish. The Villa player who’s received the most progressive passes is Lucas Digne. It’s no wonder they’re not scoring.
Working a way forward
Villa need players to be bold with the ball and to take some risks. They need players who are going to break the lines, to drag opponents into places where they don’t want or expect to be, to make the spaces that allow the team to play more dynamically in possession.
We saw some of this beginning to happen in the second match at Brentford on Tuesday. Villa deliberately gave up some possession and Brentford, who beat Villa relatively comfortably a few weeks ago having barely had a kick, crept forward.
Spaces appeared. Lamare Bogarde strutted forward with the ball. Morgan Rogers came on and got turned in the pocket. Jadon Sancho was always willing to try and take on a man in the final third, usually from a wide position and in the direction of the penalty area.
For the first time this season, Villa started to interrogate the shape and system of the opposition, to get them moving, to make them uncomfortable. It was fleeting and unsuccessful, but it was there.
Emery isn’t going to move away from a 4-2-3-1 any time soon but it’s not the formation that needs to change. Within it, I think he’s turning some dials to try to correct some of the details.
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