Aston Villa aren’t tackling anyone. What’s going on?
Aston Villa beat Burnley in the Premier League on Sunday despite winning just 10 of the 15 tackles they attempted in well above 100 minutes of football.
Villa are recovering from a poor start in the Premier League, winning their last two matches at home against Fulham and Burnley. They won their first two league phases in the Europa League, beating Bologna and Feyenoord to build up a head of steam with four consecutive victories.
Five weeks ago, there were some big question marks over the mentality of Unai Emery’s team.
Had their failure to qualify for the Champions League destroyed their confidence? Were they distracted by a summer full of transfer uncertainty? Had Emiliano Martínez become a disruptive influence?
Even Emery himself was under the most intense scrutiny of his time in charge at Villa. The performances of his team warranted that attention, yet here we are in the October international break and sure, there are still questions. But the most significant is whether Villa really have turned a corner in their season.
That’s the sort of rehabilitation that requires a huge amount of guts and hard work from a team. Emery’s players have dug deep and started to pull together some results, and their determination is absolutely part of why the points have begun to flow.
Villa’s under-par tackle ranking?
It would be easy to assume that ‘getting stuck in’ is a factor but Villa’s graft is not manifesting itself in tackles, at least in the form that’s counted as such by Opta.
There’s nothing in the numbers that suggests a problem or a lack of commitment or anything like that. It’s just one of those little data curios that’s worth exploring after a hard-fought match that was full-blooded and yet not very, er, tackly.
The short version: Villa are tackling less than almost every other team in almost every way.
AVFC Tackling 2025/26
| Metric | Villa Total | Villa PL Rank |
|---|---|---|
| No. players tackled | 88 | 19th |
| Tackles won | 54 | 18th |
| No. dribblers tackled | 42 | 20th |
| No. dribbler tackle attempts | 77 | 19th |
| Dribbler tackle success % | 45.5 | 19th |
| Tackles plus interceptions | 129 | 20th |
Opta tackling data is sliced into two different categories by Fbref – tackles and challenges. The first grouping refers to the ‘number of players’ tackled, the second to ‘number of dribblers’ tackled.
For context, Villa attempted 15 tackles (won 10) and 9 challenges (won 7) against Burnley. They are not a tackling team.
Only Newcastle United have attempted fewer tackles than Villa. Only Newcastle and West Ham United have won fewer than Villa – 54 for the season up to this point. The same three clubs have the joint-fewest tackles attempted in the attacking third.
Only Nottingham Forest have fewer in the defensive third than Villa but four teams, including the very bad West Ham and the usually pretty good Liverpool, have attempted fewer tackles in the middle third.
It’s a similar story in the challenges category and the best way to summarise it is that Villa don’t tackle often or successfully.
Is there anything to read into Villa’s tackling data?
The most obvious hypothesis is that Villa have lots of the ball in Premier League matches and therefore don’t actively tackle for possession all that much. They’re also the team that’s been tackled the most, again especially in the middle third.
Yet Villa have reached double figures for successful tackles four times in 2025/26: Brentford (league), Everton, Bologna and Burnley. That Brentford match saw Villa’s highest possession of the season but those passes were in defensive areas, if we’re being generous.
Style comes into play in a more detailed way than straightforward pass percentage. The clearest conclusion we can draw from Villa not being a tackling team, if anything, is that Villa aren’t a tackling team.
It’s not that they’re a low-block team limiting chances against high-possession. They’re not. It’s not that they’re masterfully shuffling the opposition into low-quality shooting positions from distance. They’re bang in the middle of the Premier League for shot distance against.
It’s not that Villa aren’t combative, just that they’re not combative in that specific way. Ezri Konsa is one of the best all-round defenders in the division. He can tackle but he doesn’t always need to. Tyrone Mings is an aerial dualsman and a muscular defender, but not a prolific one-on-one tackle merchant.
Pau Torres is an interesting case. His tackling stats are up on average this season, which suggests to me that he’s playing differently – the eye test is backing that up because he’s been really good defensively – and makes me wonder whether Villa’s opponents have shifted their focus.
Whether by accident or by the other team’s design Konsa is tackling less than last season, Torres more.
AVFC Tackling 2024/25
| Metric | Villa Total | Villa PL Rank |
|---|---|---|
| No. players tackled | 637 | 14th |
| Tackles won | 372 | 15th |
| No. dribblers tackled | 310 | 10th |
| No. dribbler tackle attempts | 546 | 16th |
| Dribbler tackle success % | 56.8 | 1st |
| Tackles plus interceptions | 877 | 16th |
Villa aren’t just at the bottom of the rankings this season. They’re way down on their own rankings across the whole of 2024/25. They were closer to the middle for most of these individual metrics and even top of the pile when it comes to success rate for dribblers tackled.
I don’t think there’s some hidden tactical truth here. There’s no silver-bullet conclusion or killer insight. It’s too early in the season for that and style is such a big variable – Villa’s, the opposition’s, and how the two interact – that noting that something is different is about as far as we can go.
Does it matter that it’s different? It’s difficult to tell. The drop in rankings is noteworthy because the ‘lowest’ teams for tackles and challenges attempted in 2024/25 were Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea.
But they were joined at the foot of one list by Ipswich Town and the other by Southampton, so we can’t just take it as read that Villa aren’t tackling anyone because they’re too good to have to. We just know that’s not true anyway.
Tackling data isn’t perfect. It might not even be very good. Taken as a comparison against itself, though, and the trend is at least intriguing. Villa’s analysts will have superior information and an idea of what’s really happening in terms of style and effectiveness. I’d love to know what they make of it.
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