How Unai Emery’s tactical tweak saved Aston Villa’s average performance | OneFootball

Aston Villa recorded a brilliant 1-3 victory in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie against Club Brugge.

It leaves Unai Emery’s side in a fantastic position heading into next week’s second leg. But Villa’s victory didn’t come without its challenges.

The Villans played a very controlled but risk averse first 64 minutes before Emery made a game-changing tweak to nullify Brugge’s left hand side and swing the game in his side’s favour.

In the first half, Villa set up in a 4-2-4 on the ball, planning to keep more possession in their own half. They circulated the ball between their back seven — goalkeeper, back four and two midfielders — and created their chances by going direct into the front four once Brugge pressed them high, opening space between the midfield and defensive lines.

Emery was looking for his two wingers in Marcus Rashford and Leon Bailey to stay high and wide, pinning the opposition fullbacks in the backline. It was then up to Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers to alternate positions in the left and right half spaces respectively to either pick up the ball on the turn and play out wide, or drag a defender forwards with them. This would have opened space for a direct pass into the wide men from the backline, for example Ezri Konsa often looking to make the diagonal pass into Rashford.

In the first half, Villa had 49% possession, only taking three shots in the half and generating just 0.23 Expected Goals. While this was quite toothless from the Villans, their plan to control the game and stop Brugge asserting their dominance at home worked. The Belgian side only holding 51% possession in the half, taking five shots but only generating a total of 0.14 xG with those chances.

Whenever Brugge were able to win the ball back and break, Villa were well set with their back four in shape and their double pivot well placed to apply pressure on the ball. While the Belgian side were still able to score, the tactical decisions to manage the game away from home were working to some degree.

However, in the second half Brugge managed to grow into the game, asserting their control at home and beginning to probe this Villa side. They created two big chances in the second half, boasting 63% possession and generating another 0.55 xG from six shots.

But at 64 minutes, Emery made a quadruple change, noticing the dominance Brugge were beginning to assert on the game and the energy of the crowd behind them, in order to flip the momentum in Villa’s favour.

Rashford, Bailey, Axel Disasi and John McGinn were taken off, replaced by Marco Asensio, Boubacar Kamara, Matty Cash and Jacob Ramsey. These changes also saw Villa’s on ball approach tweaked, which had positive effects both on and off the ball.

The two touch maps above are from substitutes Asensio and Cash. These changes saw Villa go from their 4-2-4 on ball approach, to more of a 3-2-5, with Cash making late overlapping runs to attack the space and provide width on the right.

Asensio was put in the No.10 position by Emery, tasked with dragging Brugge’s lone defensive midfielder to the left side of the pitch. This allowed Rogers to drift inside from the right wing,, having been moved there when Asensio entered the fray, causing problems for Brugge right-back Maxim De Cuyper.

Rogers and Asensio’s central movement was opening the right channel up for those Cash late runs, which forced Brugge winger Christos Tzolis back into defensive areas, pinning him back and therefore nullifying his threat going the other way.

De Cuyper and Tzolis had been generating most of Brugge’s dangerous attacks down Villa’s right side and this change from Emery managed to nullify their best weapons whilst simultaneously creating moments of tension down their right hand side, which led to Villa scoring two goals between the 80th and 90th minute.

While this may not have been a blockbuster Aston Villa performance for the ages, Emery managed to turn a risk averse away leg that was hanging in the balance in to a 3-1 victory to take back to Villa Park, giving them the best chance of progression to the quarter-finals, which must be applauded.