As an indicator of relative playing styles, De Guzman completed 103 passes, Aston Villa
144. With 73% possession for Swansea,
this was another game where having the ball is one thing, doing something with
it is something altogether different.
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| Shots by Minute - Villa Score with their first effort (and only manage 7 the whole match). Swansea with 17 attempts but only 6 in the second half |
Of those 17 attempts, the number that were actually quality chances is far less with 9 of the 17 being blocked.
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| Shots by Team. Swansea with plenty of efforts but only a few in decent positions |
Villa only completed 57% of their passes and almost a quarter of their passes attempted were characterised in Statszone as 'Long', this compares with 7% of Swansea's.
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| Long Passes by side, Swansea's mainly horizontal, Villa's going from front to back, bypassing the midfield |
The fact that the Chelsea game was only 48 hours prior to this one obviously had a major impact on team selection with only Tremmel, Williams and Shelvey playing the full 90 minutes in both games.
All is by no means rosy at the moment but neither is it a catastrophe, 3 defeats on the bounce against Man C, Man U and Spurs however could see the end of Jan/start Feb give us to 6 pointers against Fulham and West Ham, both of whom are in the relegation zone as things stand but are only 5 points behind.
The Jol school of thought that 'There's at least 3 teams worse than us' would be over complacent but similarly there's enough ability in this squad to still be around the 11th place currently held but there is a feeling that seems to be hanging over everyone that things are not quite right at the moment.
