Great stat and interesting insight;
"There is a way of quantifying this, that helps to illustrate just what an outlier this Villa group is within the context of the Premier League. There are 29 current player pairings that have started 135 games together in the competition. Fourteen play for Aston Villa.
Those connections are all over the pitch. When Emiliano Martinez kicks it long to Ollie Watkins, it is a run that the goalkeeper has been seeking in 189 Premier League starts now. Watkins and McGinn? It is 172 starts and counting together for those pair.
Ezri Konsa has started at least 135 Premier League matches with six current Villa players. One recalls having a conversation with him as long ago as 2021 about the partnership that he had developed not just with Tyrone Mings but with Matty Cash, the man to his right."
by its-joe-mo-fo
2 Comments
I think it’s hard to say if this stat is positive or just an indictment of our transfer policy really. We can still field a starting 11 of Dean Smith players, a manager we sacked 4 and a half years ago. We’ve spent tens of millions of pounds in the intervening time signing new players and a lot of them have failed to produce to the levels required.
We’ve massively overperformed with this squad, which goes to show how good a manager Unai is, but I bet he’d rather have a few more options in the squad that are actual premier league standard (a back up right back, a decent winger etc), than have these big partnership numbers.
suprised that the meedya havent spoken about the scouse elephant in the room – if we are now calling out this is Dean Smiths team with good coaching and a few new signings on top; what happened Post Deano and Pre Unai i wonder laa? ey ey ey ey ey yew listening Carra?
theres a whiff of convenient timing of the analysis too. Our core has been out for ages – Bouba, Youri. they are our two most important players, Pau, Maatsen. european specalists. then theres our record signing Diaby who we had to sell on to limbo under the moving guiderails and the lower SCR % from being in europe vs the prem
Hard to not be an outlier with Ron Saunders level of ‘same team every week’ when the sky 6 ropeladder not in place for Oligarch FC is now denying NSWE wallet to open, and we have 4 key players crocked.