A sporting director at a high-profile European club takes his phone out of his pocket and leans over the table.
He shows The Athletic a self-created graph, scaling every side in European competitions this season.
The left side of the graph depicts every team’s average possession from the previous campaign. The right and across the bottom of the graph indicates the regularity of every team’s ability to counter-attack.
The sporting director — speaking anonymously to protect relationships — remarked that Aston Villa were bang in the middle, intersecting both styles.
In his opinion, Villa sit in the sweet spot of footballing trends, retaining the controlled possession of all successful teams for more than a decade and now at the forefront of the direction the sport is going.
The Premier League exemplifies this. High possession is being disrupted by verticality, physicality and set pieces. Villa are well-placed to intertwine both approaches.
“They have control, they have pace, they have intensity”, the sporting director said, pointing to his graph.
Villa could adjust depending on the game, but remain balanced. Like a Swiss Army knife, manager Unai Emery has the tools depending on the job at hand.
Football’s increasingly transitional nature has disturbed possession teams, but it can also hurt those who veer too dramatically left or right on the graph, owing to the predictability which makes them vulnerable.
“All the clubs winning titles, they have been possession-based, but in recent years, it has changed,” the sporting director continued. “The teams being successful are in the middle of the graph — they are able to play both.
“So last season, Manchester City are alone (in high possession) and last season was not good for City. This is data I analyse when deciding on what profiles of players to sign.”
The graph below illustrates Villa tending to have a healthy possession rate yet also carrying a threat in counter-attacks.
This is in line with the average rate across Europe’s top five leagues.
Compared to fellow Premier League teams, Villa are slightly to the right of the graph.
Despite football domestically becoming more transitional and direct, possession retains importance. It is no coincidence that five of the league’s top six sides — Arsenal, Manchester City, Villa, Chelsea and Liverpool — average the highest share of possession.
“When we appointed our manager, I said, ‘We want to be polyvalent (versatile) on the pitch’,” the sporting director added.
“We checked the structure of Champions League winners, Premier League winners and Serie A winners and what they have in common. Between the boxes, they are athletic, they have one ball-playing defender, in Villa’s case Pau Torres, and one athletic defender, again, Ezri Konsa.
“Emery has built a very good team. If you analyse them, they can play exactly in the middle, as I showed you. It is difficult to play against them, because they can control the game or they can play very fast and direct. They have a lot of polyvalence, which means players can play in several different positions.”
Emery’s work over three and a half years at Villa has solidified a style that is more than the sum of its parts. His overarching principles are the difference-maker, not the personnel.
It is why Villa are third in the league and favourites to win the Europa League, defying several injuries and a frontline that has regularly misfired.
Sitting in the middle of styles means Emery can adapt in every game.
Home to Brentford, for example, Emery was wary of their ability to generate chances from high turnovers.
Villa set up in a 4-2-2-2 shape from their own goal kicks, with Jadon Sancho pushed higher and narrow.
The box midfield behind ensured they were all ready to win the second ball and progress upfield that way.
At Newcastle United, Emery tweaked Villa’s slow ball circulation around the backline to instructing Emiliano Martinez to kick long. Villa then pounced on second balls.
Emiliano Buendia would drift inside from the left No 10 position, which was a chief strategy in adapting to and exploiting Newcastle.
The host’s full-backs were man-to-man and rather than pass on their wingers, or in Villa’s case, left and right-sided No 10s, as they moved central, they would instead follow them.
So it left Trippier moving into an unfamiliar midfield position to track Buendia, who continued to play in combination and proximity with Morgan Rogers.
Emery asked Ollie Watkins to make in-to-out runs into the left channel and in the space Trippier left. Here, Watkins is arching his run into that area, due to Buendia drifting inside the pitch.
The instance below shows Trippier tracking Buendia, vacating his right-back position.
Watkins subsequently spins into the space. Rogers provides a well-executed switch of play, resulting in Watkins bearing down on goal.
Often but not always, Villa strategise to drag the opponent’s full-backs inside the pitch. Managers are wary of this, including David Moyes, who prefers his winger to screen passes and keep his full-back in their usual spaces, but others, like Andoni Iraola, have spoken about how strenuous it is stop Villa, particularly when Emery can change the threat in behind.
Against Brentford, Sancho would make runs beyond the backline, in part explained by Watkins’ absence and his replacement, Tammy Abraham, proving a differing profile of forward.
Another marked change in strategy came in the 1-0 victory at Bournemouth last season.
Emery has never lost to Iraola, with a common thread running through every contest. Emery is aware of Iraola’s pressing acumen and that Bournemouth are better with less possession because it increases the frequency of pressing opportunities.
Consequently, Emery was happy to go direct, bypassing the press or ceding possession altogether, with data backing up that Bournemouth do not tend to win when they average over 50 per cent possession.
Villa sat in a mid-to-low block and recorded just 37 per cent possession.
When ball-dominant, Villa train to move methodically up the pitch, sometimes side-to-side then forward, akin to a rugby-type move. In turn, sweeping, diagonal attacking patterns from one side to the other are frequent.
Such patterns of play start from the back, however. When Villa have a plus-one (an extra player) in their build-up, Emery will aim to overload a pressing team.
Villa configure with the back four spread and deep — producing a four-versus-three or five-versus-four with Martinez — with the box midfield in front, two midfielders and two No 10s, usually overloading opponents by an extra player. This emboldens Villa to play short from goal kicks.
When Villa do relinquish possession, they lean into their counter-attacking strengths. Built in a constantly fluid system that can change from a 4-2-2-2 to a 4-2-3-1 formation and, most prevalently, a 3-2-5 system with the ball, Emery encourages incisive passes through the lines.
To do this, he creates central overloads through a box-midfield. No Premier League side has generated or played more centrally since Emery’s arrival in October 2022.
Emery wants his chief ball-carriers in those positions.
In the pre-season of 2024, Emery moved Rogers central. This enabled the England international to stay in areas more conducive to transition into space.
Emery has used 11 players this season who, in the words of the high-ranking sporting director, are “polyvalent”.
Players’ multi-faceted nature is a reflection of their manager. Together, this adds another layer of unpredictability and why, even in Emery’s fourth season and little ostensible change, opponents still run into the same problems. Villa have a combination of qualities that have contributed to enduring success.