Aston Villa 1-0 Man City: Bent strikes on debut
The starting line-ups
Manchester City dominated the game but somehow managed to come away with nothing.
Gerard Houllier named a very attack-minded side – Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, Marc Albrighton and Gabriel Agbonlahor all played behind Darren Bent, who made his first start for the club. Carlos Cuellar returned at right-back.
Roberto Mancini brought David Silva back into the side on the right, and Jerome Boateng replaced Pablo Zabaleta at right-back. Edin Dzeko started his second game for City.
Villa started well here. As in the derby against Birmingham last week, it was clear that pressing has become part of their game – they pressured City from the front and even forced Joe Hart into hurried clearances, rather than sitting back in their own half as they had done at the start of Houllier’s reign.
Formations
The home side were set out in a 4-1-4-1 shape, with Stiliyan Petrov playing as the holding man ahead of the defence. Young played very deep – rather than staying up as a link between the midfield and Bent, he dropped alongside Downing and spent much of the game inside his own half.
The problem with Villa playing this system was that they were up against a City side who kept their holding midfielders in position, and pushed their full-backs forward ahead of them. This meant that when Villa’s midfield responded and naturally tracked the full-backs, the Villa wingers became deeper than the central midfielders, and they lost the intended shape. Villa usually use their wingers to support the main striker, but here they became pushed so far into their own half that Bent became completely isolated and barely had any support. Still, he managed to tap home a rebound to put Villa 1-0 up, and from there the home side concentrated on protecting the lead.
City’s shape was a 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 hybrid – though they were so rarely defending it was difficult to see what their true formation was when they didn’t have the ball. Sometimes David Silva was on the right and Gareth Barry the left, with Carlos Tevez off Edin Dzeko, but sometimes Barry was more narrow with Silva looking like he was part of a front three, with Tevez coming left. Either way, it offered no real link between the midfield and the attack – a surprising problem considering Villa were hardly packing their side with holding players – and Dzeko had little service in the first half.
City’s only bright spark was Aleksander Kolarov, who put in some excellent corners and also stormed forward in open play, often unmarked. This was a result of the confusion about City’s shape – sometimes Albrighton would find himself tracking Barry when the former Villa man came out to that flank, and Cuellar kept an eye on Tevez – leaving Kolarov to get forward without any attention. He was far more attack-minded than Jerome Boateng on the other side.
Second half
Mancini moved some players around for the second half. First, Yaya Toure played much higher up the pitch – he was far too conservative in the first half and offered little going forward. Also, Tevez and Dzeko switched, with Tevez happier coming short to meet the ball in a ‘false nine’ role, illustrating why City seemed to lack a link player in the first half – he is usually that link player, as well as the main goalscorer.
City passed the ball much more quickly and seemed more dangerous, though they still had one too many players sitting back rather than testing the Villa defence. Therefore, Mancini removed Barry and brought on Adam Johnson, pushing Toure slightly deeper again and going 4-2-3-1 with Silva in the centre – though it was really a 4-1-1-3-1, with de Jong much deeper than Toure.
Last-ditch defending
Villa changed nothing in the second period (until the very late change of Nigel Reo-Coker for Petrov), though Downing dropped slightly deeper, and the wingers played so deep than the 4-5-1 sometimes looked like a 6-3-1, especially as the defence was playing so narrow.
This narrowness worked very nicely – City were so reluctant to go wide and put the ball into the box, always looking to try and play through the centre. Even Johnson, who provided initial width by staying near the touchline, wanted to come inside onto his stronger foot. Villa’s use of four centre-backs helped, and their second half performance essentially consisted of getting blocks in around the edge of the penalty area.
Mancini’s options from the bench were minimal but he could have changed things further – Boateng offered little drive from full-back and could have been replaced with Milner, who has played at full-back before (and for the final 10-15 minutes would have spent the game in the opposition half anyway) to provide some natural width and perhaps some crosses. Despite their dominance and insistence on playing short passes through the centre, City barely ever successfully played the ball into the box in open play.
Conclusion
A resilient defensive performance from Villa. The addition of Bent made them no more attack-minded, but they have lacked a poacher this season, and probably wouldn’t have recorded this victory without him.
City looked slightly lost in the final third. Their dilemma is how to use their attacking players – more specifically, how to accommodate Dzeko without moving Tevez away from the zone he’s played so well in over the past year.
Aston Villa 1-0 Man City: Bent strikes on debut
Dzeko was a pointless buy unless they know how to use him well. In my opinion, they should continue with this off-balance 4-3-3 formation yet have Tevez and Dzeko up-top with the former dropping down to collect the ball and spraying out wide or to Dzeko.
Excellent work as ever.
One of the first things I noticed was City’s full backs. Kolarov is known to be an attacking full back and has been improving of late, but Boateng is also rather useful getting forward too despite naturally being a centre half – his crossing is excellent and he proved in South Africa how useful he can be getting forward. But looking at who was against the full backs it is easy to see why City posed more of a threat from the left – Boateng had Gabby Agbonlahor to contend with, while Kolarov was up against Mark Albrighton who, whilst being dangerous going forward can be found wanting on the defensive side of things. Agbonlahor, for my money, was excellent, especially in the first half; whenever Boateng got the ball he seemed to have Agbonlahor breathing down his neck.
It’s also somewhat frustrating when you’ve got someone like Edin Dzeko who can cause Villa’s centre halves problems, when Villa made sure that they defended as narrow as they could and considering that City’s main outlet in the first half was Kolarov that City were so reluctant to try and get around Villa in the wide areas and put the ball in that way rather than trying to pass it through the middle. Looking at how we passed the ball in our match at Eastlands last month, it certainly looks like a sensible approach (see below):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/chalkboards/b9TSKC8ak2KPE8AiR0P3
Boateng was simply not attacking enough today. City’s christmas tree shape demands aggressive fullbacks that can cross and stretch the play. They bought Dzeko now because, had they waited until the summer, Juventus would have signed him. If/When Tevez leaves this summer, they Dzeko will be their main goal threat. For this game, City needed a winger stationed on the “correct” side, to play crosses toward Dzeko, who is an outstanding header of the ball. Playing Silva, Tevez, and then Adam Johnson wide does not suit Dzeko’s game. The formation for next year (assuming Tevez leaves) ought to have Silva playing in a free role (his best position) behind Dzeko, with wide midfielders who can cross.
i agree with what your saying but johnson put in very good cross and dzeko put the header wide!!, i think he should have scored
Great to see Bent get a goal on his debut – feel he was let down at Tottenham.
very harsh statement. Bents stats at Spurs are very impressive, considering Redknapp hated him. In 07/08 season he had a better goal tally than 1 in 2 (in the premier league). And in the 08/09 season his total ratio of goals per minutes played was 162 mins a goal, which is incredible. Its not obvious to see these stats as he made a lot of appearances off the bench, but should be made clear to all spurs fans that didnt like him, as any striker in the world would be proud of that record.
I said I felt he was let down – not that he was _a_ let down! I think we’re agreeing.
He’s a real marmite player for Spurs supporters. The general criticism is that he doesn’t do anything other than score goals, and only scores lots of goals because he plays for ‘poor’ teams. No, I don’t understand that logic, either…
Great win for Villa but disappointing loss for City who showed they are incapable of grinding out a win or nicking a draw.
They were on the front foot for most of the game but struggled to break a resilient Villa defence. Dunne and Collins are not pretty but they are tough and effective and get vital blocks and deflections in at the right time.
Dzeko will probably take time to settle and fit into the team and its worth remembering he has not played for 30 days before joining City. Whether he is there to replace Tevez in the long run remains to be seen but this was an off day for Carlos who may prefer to be the main man up front.
Villa look much improved and with Young, Bent and Agbonlahor should stretch a few teams in the matches to come.
The true possition for Džeko is centre forward, but beetween centre back and right-back. Or centre forward in the middle and than he moves to the left. When he moves to the right he is not that good.
He needs good crosser from the right flank, winger or right-back who will send him good pass on back post.
this is perfect example of that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxkokrgyJZI —>1st goal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgl3et_dEs —>1st goal
LOL mancini
I only saw the first half. But Dzeko, Tevez and Silva all seemed to constantly run in each other’s space, which made it easy for Villa to defend.
In some ways this was a carbon copy of Villa’s match with Everton early on in the season: Villa nicked an early goal and defended for 90min in that game as well. The problem with playing against Villa is they’ll let you go wide by defending very narrow, but the one needs to get the ball down the line with the wingers, but Dunne and Collins are big blokes who know how to deal with crosses/long balls as well.(partly demonstrated by that Derbyshire chalkboard last week). City could have tried to use Dzeko as more of an arial threat a bit more often though. Effectively they looked like Arsenal on a bad day…
I’ve noted that McClaren also adopted a 4231 at the start of Wolfsburg’s bundesliga campaign; after three successive losses (albeit one to Bayern) the switch was made to a 4312 with Dzeko usually being paired with Grafite. I’ll be very interested to see if Mancini opts to take a similar tactical decision after City’s failure to win the points; assuming you want to play Dzeko and Tevez in the same team, the answer may well be to play a 442 (a 4312 would arguably suit City better with either Toure or Silva operating out of the hole, but with Dzeko’s height advantage the width which they were so clearly lacking today might be a better option) with Dzeko operating as a target man/advanced forward and Tevez dropping deep (as is his natural inclination) to provide an addition link between attack and midfield.
I think city should try a barcelona like forward line, with Tevez obviously playing the ‘false nine’ role and Dzeko playing David Villa’s role, though I’m not sure about how the latter one will work out. Silva again fits naturally into Pedro’s role.
They are completely different players. Villa and Pedro make off-the-ball diagonal sprints towards goal, looking to penetrate the defensive line with their great acceleration. Dzeko and Silva both want the ball played to feet, not behind. Much like Tevez. A false nine needs those players making runs into the gaps they create.
As a trio they lack width and penetration, which is exactly what Barcelona *do* get from their attackers.
agreed
I still don’t see the logic of buying Dzeko as they now HAVE to play him. Unlike City’s other attackers he isn’t versatile so the team has to play a certain way and are a lot more predictable. Tevez has been on fire as a false nine……..why mess with that? Dzeko could be the best center forward in the world but is that what Man City need?
I don’t get it.