Champions League Data & Tactical Preview (Quarterfinals, Second Leg)

Aston Villa vs. PSG

Aston Villa in Possession vs. PSG out of Possession

Trailing by two goals is about as bad of a situation that Aston Villa can find themselves.

The reason being, they only he’d 25% of the ball and allowed PSG to have a 88.1% field in the first leg.

image via markstats.club

How do you flip that on one of the most possession dominant teams in the world? The simple answer is they aren’t. So, how do you effectively take advantage of counter attacks and more importantly, how to do you effectively build out of the back.

Aston Villa consistently was pinning themselves out wide and PSG’s man to man press was either forcing danger zone losses (Villa had 30 with only 25% possession, THATS BAD) or simply forcing them to play the ball long like this.

They are going to have find some way to play through PSG’s press because Enrique is not backing off and Villa is does not rank highly in terms of winning duels.

PSG in Possession vs. Aston Villa out of Possession

Aston Villa found out in the first leg that defending PSG is quite literally impossible if you are a team that cannot effectively press them high up the pitch.

Aston Villa played a number of different formations in the match and the main goal was to keep PSG out of the middle of the pitch. There were even times they resorted to a 6-3-1 to avoid PSG’s five man overload on the last line of defense.

There were a couple of problems with this approach. First off, PSG’s fluid rotations make it incredibly difficult to avoid getting overloaded out wide. As you can see from the image above, Kvaratskhelia started at left wing, but is now over on the right side of the pitch.

The other problem is Villa were isolated out wide all match, which honestly led to PSG’s first two goals.

Even though both of PSG’s goal would be defined as a “low quality chance” by xG standards it does highlight that you are playing a dangerous game by going 1 v 1 against the attackers PSG has.

The Kvaratskhelia goal is a good example of that. PSG were on a break here and Villa had them outnumbered. But, as you can see from the image below, Konsa looked over his shoulder because Hakimi was making a run into the open space.

Because of that Kvaratskhelia was afforded the space to beat the fullback and beat Emi Martinez with a top shelf finish.

There were also instanced that when Villa was defending in their low block that their defensive line got way too low and afforded PSG free shots and passes inside Zone 14.

image via markstats.club

Going back to start, if you are playing six at the back, this can very easily happen and doing it with the finishers PSG has is a very dangerous game to play.

Good luck Villa.