Why Aston Villa’s attacking set pieces might be their best defence against Liverpool | OneFootball

The Villans constantly reinvent themselves and ensure opponents are never given an easy moment from dead ball situations. The issue with genius like this, however, is that sometimes it’s a thin line away from idiocy. And when you’re in probably the most competitive and most transitional Premier League of all time, idiocy costs badly.

Idiocy was very much the word of the day when Aston Villa visited Anfield in November, and so it feels my duty to give my old friend (hated enemy) Unai Emery a heads-up in how to avoid this: looking at what went wrong last time, and how he can potentially revitalise a seemingly dead-in-the-water title race.

The first step: what went wrong. For the first goal at Anfield, Villa did as most teams do against Liverpool and attack the front post. It’s been their Achilles heel in all these years for reasons I wish I could pinpoint, but the rule of thumb is that if you want to sneak one in past Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, you get there early.

The general structure looks like below. But what you’ll notice is that due to Villa’s insistence in crowding that space, Liverpool are afforded a spare man right next to the ball (and in its likely drop location).

What is startling here is the spaces Villa allow to open up within five seconds of the corner. While they have two back, these two are caught between pressuring high and dropping back, meaning you have nearly 15 yards between the defensive lines. At this point, Darwin Nunez and Mo Salah have started into ‘head-down sprinting mode’ – Nunez in particular going from front post to the halfway line in around eight seconds. Villa’s ‘rest defence’ here is totally at rest, while Liverpool are seeing open green space as an invitation.

At the time Van Dijk plays the ball, Villa have six players still in Liverpool’s box, and only two behind the ball. Villa are rolling the dice that they can take advantage of this second phase but not putting themselves in an intelligent position to do so.

The same happens again 10 minutes later, but it’s slightly improved from a Villa perspective. Youri Tielemans and Jacob Ramsey are tight to the edge, so Salah and Diaz get slightly less space centrally. And there is an extra man near the taker to prevent Van Dijk from getting into that space.

Once again, however, the same issue occurs. Villa rush to enforce a second phase, but Liverpool are running against that momentum. Nunez has gambled, Salah is in the pocket left by Tielemans second-guessing the guess, and Luis Diaz is taking up more space left by a weakly retreating taker. Villa’s scoring tactic is so reliant on a mass of bodies in the six-yard box that it makes their corners into Russian roulette.

It must be said, this is not just a Villa problem, rather something Liverpool have excelled at for years.

Under Jurgen Klopp, there was a noted effort to turn defensive moments into opportunities for transition, and the squad build allowed that perfectly: Van Dijk and Alisson to win first contact, Trent Alexander-Anrold as a quarterback, then Salah and Sadio Mane (and then Nunez and Diaz) as head-down runners. You can see this type of goal all the way back against Arsenal in 2017, and even against Not Terrible Arsenal in 2023.

The solution to this near-decade-long problem isn’t simple, strangely enough, but Villa do make a nice adjustment later. Ramsey goes very tight on Salah to prevent him unlocking those wider runners from the corner taker’s side. And it forces the defenders to step out of Liverpool’s defence line to deal with the aftermath.

Not only does this stop the counter, it improves the chance of a valuable scramble for Villa, as gaps appear in that robust Reds wall. This closes the pitch up and minimises the space that you can lose those running races in. A lot of attention will be put into the man sitting on halfway, but he’s null and void due to better compaction higher up.

For me this can generally be fed into a wider ideology I’ve been hinting to above: Stop half-baking your strategy.

You can see the damage an inconsistent press can do — or least if you’ve watched Manchester United — and so especially in these moments of a squeezed pitch, the worst thing you can do from a defensive point of view is open up spaces you aren’t in control of.

If your players aren’t retreating quickly enough, reduce the space they have to retreat. If the opposition are abusing clear runs into space and pockets, disrupt those lines and stick tight. Villa are likely blessed by Nunez being out-of-favour now, but the logic still holds for Salah and Diaz. Below is how I’d set up, using this ideal. Feel free to use it Austin, but if it goes wrong, do what I’ve done for the last 8 years and blame Emery.