The title says it all really. Aston Villa have been on a terrible run of form, culminating in the cancellation of their monthly Goal of the Month vote. Their last goal was scored against Liverpool in their 1-0 win at Anfield on the 13th of September. They would go on to lose to Arsenal, Chelsea, Mancehster City, Everton, and QPR (in that order). In this period of time, Aston Villa would fall from 2nd in the table to their current location at 16th. While that is certainly one of the most difficult runs I have ever seen, to not register a single goal is worrying for any Villa fan. In this run of games, Villa only managed to have 12 shots on target, which is even worse when you consider 6 of those came against QPR. That’s 2.4 shots on target per game, and only 1.2 shots on target per game when you take out the outlier of QPR. It isn’t as though Villa aren’t getting the opportunity to shoot, however, they are just being incredibly wasteful. In those games, Aston Villa had 32 shots off target, which is almost 3 times the number of shots on target they took and 73% of the shots they’ve taken.
Usually, one would expect a shift to focus on defensive stability when offense is stalling. This, however, is not the case, with Aston Villa allowing 13 goals in their last 5 games (averaging 2.6 goals a game).
November will have at least one entry, though, with Andreas Wiemann’s goal against Tottenham last weekend. Fears will remain, though, with Aston Villa running one of the leakiest defenses in the league and the tough run still not over, with surprise packages of this young season, West Ham and Southampton, up next.
