Aston Villa Season Review: Sherwood Escapes the Drop

Aston Villa were one of several Premier League teams to have a dramatically lopsided season. Until February, Villa seemed destined to face the drop for the first time in the Premier League era. The appointment of former Spurs boss Tim Sherwood after the sacking of Paul Lambert revivified Villa’s corpse. They went on to narrowly survive in the Premier League and were runners-up in the FA Cup final against Arsenal.

Playing for 90 has already spent some time with Aston Villa’s season. What Tim Sherwood has done since his February appointment has been nothing short of rewriting the genetic code of a team that faced extinction. To reiterate some numbers from the FA Cup Final tactical preview last week, Paul Lambert’s Villa was scoring at a pace of 0.48 goals per game in the 2014/15 Premier League season. To extend that out to a full season, that would have meant that Villa could have expected to score about 18 goals if Lambert stayed the course. That’s ten goals worse than Burnley, the lowest scorers of this Premier League season.

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Tim Sherwood diagnosed that ailment and went to work curing it immediately. He abandoned Lambert’s overly-cautious tactical rigidity and pushed his players forward in attack. It wasn’t a vulgar and desperate attempt to score goals by any means available. This was a spear, not a battering ram, and striker Christian Benteke was at its tip. It was a tactic designed to exploit every possible weakness in the opposition’s defense in order to afford Villa’s star striker room to express himself. And express himself he did. Only two of his 13 league goals came before Sherwood’s appointment.

Sherwood experienced something similar last season after his mid-season appointment at Tottenham. He brought in Emmanuel Adebayor from the cold and managed to wring the absolute best out of him for the remainder of the season. His tactics naturally rely on a talented focal point in attack. It’s hard to imagine what a Sherwood side would look like without a talismanic striker.

Sherwood’s cure for Villa’s offensive issues came with some harsh side effects. Specifically, the energetic forward press to support Benteke meant that huge amounts of space was left opened just ahead of the defense. Under Lambert, that defense had been fairly solid. Sherwood’s methods left the defense suddenly exposed to opposition counter-attacks.

Benteke and company could often offset the suddenly porous defense, but the strain and impracticality of such a scheme began to show toward the end of the season. The 6-1 loss to Southampton on the penultimate game of the season stands out in particular as a highlight reel of all the weaknesses of Sherwood’s system. Even when he tried to learn from the mistakes of that game and inject some defensive nous into the side they were still overrun by a (admittedly fantastic) Arsenal side in the FA Cup final this past Saturday.

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In the end, Sherwood did what needed to be done to keep Aston Villa in the Premier League for another season. His methods were bold and ultimately reckless, but they achieved the bar minimum results necessary to call this season a success.  An appearance in the FA Cup final suggests that Sherwood isn’t entirely full of hot air. Perhaps there might be some sanity amidst all the madness. It might not have been quite enough to convince owner Randy Lerner to stay on with the club, but at the very least Sherwood can promise any new ownership some entertaining football next season. The key will be to make it a tad more balanced and a lot more sustainable.

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The Top Flight

What to Expect Next Season: Tim Sherwood will have to learn to restrain himself, but Villa could see some improvement in 2015/16. The prospect of losing Benteke to a bigger club looms, but if new ownership are willing to invest in new players this might not be as big a concern as it seems. Fans should hope for a mid-table finish but brace themselves for another relegation battle if Sherwood doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

Verdict: D+. Taking the full season into consideration, with Lambert’s dead-man-walking months at the helm and Sherwood’s mixed bag, Villa can really only be said to be just passing.