Swansea 2 - Aston Villa 2 Stats and Chalkboards

Given the first half hour yesterday and Villa's recent form, it's easy to see this as a huge opportunity wasted but equally if you get an injury time equaliser you can't be too downcast as much for the two points taken away from Villa as the point gained.

I certainly agree with the Gary Player maxim 'The more I practise, the luckier I get', but where we benefited from some dodgy goalkeeping against Fulham, the second goal against Villa just wouldn't come, other days you get results like the opening day win v QPR where everything seems to go in.

The top level goal attempt stats are almost an exact reversal of the Fulham match with one side having far more attempts than the other but actual attempts on target being pretty similar:

Attempts by Team, Swansea had 10 attempts in first 30 min then only 1 in rest of half

Looking over the stats for the game the one that struck me most was that of Aerial Duels, with Swansea winning just 14 out of 55, they key contributor to this for Villa were Benteke up front and Ciaran Clark in defence:

Along with Chris Herd winning 7/9 duels, Villa had by far the best of the Aerial battle

The aerial battle was even more one-sided in the second half than the first with Swansea winning just 4 of 22 duels in the second half:

Aerial Duels by half, Graham won 1 of 9 duels and Chico 1/7

One thing to always bear in mind with Aerial Duels is that there will be cases where you may not want to win the header (e.g., where you know a strikers flick on will go straight through to the keeper).  Also if a ball is played in 'correctly' (i.e., relatively flat) it's not a fair contest and the striker is more likely to win the duel.

Having said all that, when looking at the outcomes of goalkeeper passing you can see a huge difference in the Blue/Red split (Success/Fail) between the teams:

All passes (including goal kicks) by keeper, majority of Guzan's passes into the opposition half find a team mate

Remaining unbeaten over the 4 games around the Christmas period is nothing to be sniffed at and as players such as Pablo continue to acclimatise the second half of the season could continue to provide great entertainment.

Pablo made almost double the number of final third passes of any other player and also created the most chances (4) with the next highest players creating 2

Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats: Created using Statszone

Chalkboards: Created using Statszone http://fourfourtwo.com/statszone