Player Positional Tracker: Liverpool v Aston Villa
Liverpool 0 vs 1 Aston Villa
As usual, click on the gif to open in a larger window
Some things I noticed from this PPT:
1st Half:
- It took 25 minutes for Gerrard to retreat into his usual deep defensive spot, up until that time his dot continually appears in the Aston Villa half – this isn’t the normal spot for the 2014 version of Stevie G
- No surprise that Aston Villa seen very little of the ball after they took the lead
- Lallana’s dot was very small for virtually all of the first half; this suggests that he wasn’t able to get himself involved from an attacking point of view. It was only during the last 5 minutes of the half that his dot increases in size
- Cleverley played in a relatively advanced position. Delph was consistently behind Villa’s new signing, indeed Agbonlahor is even shown as being more defensively located at certain times in the half
2nd Half:
- Liverpool virtually played a 2-2-6 formation during the second half as they attempted to find the equaliser
- Lambert’s extreme movements is due to the few actions (and therefore reference points for us to calculate) he had as a late sub. The fewer the number of actions the less smoothing we can do to his recorded locations
- Balotelli wasn’t able to get himself involved. His dot was continually the smallest out of Liverpool’s 6 attacking players. Probably no surprise to see Super Mario being substituted off
Article by Colin Trainor