Villa have now won their first game under Tim Sherwood and their first in the leagu since the 7th of December. Things are starting to look up, it seems, and maybe we are starting to see the green shoots of recovery for this once-great club.
Tim Sherwood has arrived to great fanfare and media interest, and the team have stopped the rot. Now we’re all asking if the new manager can inspire his team to climb out of the bottom three and beat the dreaded Premier League drop come May.
First off, let’s look at just how bad Villa have been this season. If you’re a Villa fan, the next few paragraphs will be something akin to masochist theatre, but bear with me.
Things always seem darkest before the dawn. The young Villa side has looked devoid of ideas, and goalscoring has been an obvious problem.
Jokes have been made and countless pieces have been written, but it is worth restating that Benteke’s goal in the 2-1 defeat at home to Chelsea was Villa’s first league goal in 659 minutes. Only one minute short of an entire eleven goalless hours of excruciating Premier League football.
And if you look at the rest of the stats for the season, they make for bad reading for Villa fans too. Only three Villa players have scored more than one league goal all season. Their top scorer in the league is Gabriel Agbonlahor with a paltry 4 goals.
Only two Villa players, Benteke and Andreas Weimann to be precise, have more than one assist. The strikers aren’t scoring, and with no midfielder chipping in with more than one assist, the supposedly creative part of the team is clearly devoid of ideas.
In fact, Villa’s 15 goal return so far this season is by some distance the worst in the league. Which would almost be alright, forgivable even, if they weren’t conceding goals too. But they are. Not as many as the teams below them, but enough to make their goal difference the worst in the division.
With players like Benteke, Weimann and Agbonlahor you wouldn’t have expected Villa to struggle quite so much in front of goal. Part of their problem has been an inability to create chances.
Tom Cleverley, Ashley Westwood and Fabian Delph in the middle are all fairly similar players, and each looks lost, unable to create too many clear cut chances for teammates. But with an average of 10.4 shots per game in the league, only 2.9 of which are on target, it does look as though the strikers have to take at least some of the blame.
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But I’d rather stay clear of attributing too much blame. After all, this smacks of a team that has lost its way, and lost its confidence. It looks as if they have lost the confidence to try things in the midfield, and the confidence to convert those shots into goals – the only stat that matters, really.
But maybe Tim Sherwood is the man to bring back that confidence.
Veteran Villa keeper Shay Given was asked about his first impressions of the new manager. He replied that he thinks Sherwood is a ‘fantastic leader’, ‘a real positive person,’ and that, ‘he just oozes confidence’. That’s exactly what you want in a manager at any club, but especially in one who is coming into a team that lacks confidence.
Sherwood’s job in the short term is to give the team a boost, to help the players find their self-belief again, and try to get them to find the back of the net. Villa don’t need a master tactician – he would have no time to sign players and put a plan in place anyway.
They need a motivational, inspirational figure to get the best out of under-performing players. They need someone with self-belief, and Sherwood has bags of it.
In fact, his audacity in turning down Championship jobs, and even allegedly being selective with vacant Premier League jobs is refreshing, though maybe even a bit too much. You may even have started to wonder if chairmen were going to get a little sick of an inexperienced manager’s pickiness.
Sherwood is quoted as saying, ‘Guardiola didn’t have to go out and work in the lower leagues, did he?’ Well, Pep did actually spend a few seasons as Barcelona B boss, cutting his teeth in the Spanish Segunda B. But the former Spurs boss clearly isn’t shy about grandstanding or staking his claim for a place in the managerial elite.
But his audacity and self-confidence are part of his inspiration. Sherwood was able to get the most out of individuals at Spurs during his spell there. Players like Adebayor started to fire under his leadership. He is also heralded for bringing through youngsters like Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb, having faith in them and bestowing upon them the confidence to go out and set the Premier League on fire.
Villa are full of young players too. And in some respect, Paul Lambert has to be praised for his willingness to give this youth a chance. But now it is up to Sherwood to give them the confidence to take this chance, and to prepare for the fight to keep Villa in the league.
A young team devoid of confidence now has a young manager with shedloads of it. Sherwood will help restore confidence and belief a fading group and that is what Villa need right now.
Villa fans may not have seen much inspiration in the first two-thirds of the season, but the new managerial appointment may just help them turn that corner in the short term at least. Just like in this article, Villa fans have had lots to bring them down in the opening salvo, but maybe by the end, confidence and belief will have returned to the Villa Park faithful.
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