After the World Cup this year, a few teams have reshuffled their talent pools. People are eager to see which clubs have come out of the shake-up better off and which are worse for wear. The answers will gradually be revealed on the first of October, starting with the opening match, Aston Villa Women versus Manchester United Women. This tactical analysis and match preview revisits tactics deployed in a previous match between the two while sharing analysis and discussing what to expect from the upcoming game.

Aston Villa finished the last WSL season with impressive achievements and earned plenty of plaudits. Ending the 2021/22 season in ninth place with 13 goals, they climbed up to fifth place with 47 goals in the 2022/23 season and brought the Golden Boot home. Lots of credit was given to the newly recruited star players like Rachel Daly, Kenza Dali, Lucy Staniforth and Jordan Nobbs. However, the comments also admitted that coach Clara Ward, who signed with Villa in 2021, was a big part of this leap.

Under Marc Skinner’s leadership, Manchester United had a successful 2022/23 season in WSL, missing out on the title by only two points. The club has lost some key players lately and has to reorganise the attacking pattern they relied on.

The Last Duel

If we’re trying to catch a hint of what will happen, it’s inevitable to look back at its previous counterpart. In April 2023, the rising dark horse and runner-up of the WSL 2022/23 season had a remarkable match. Aston Villa kept getting ahead, while United kept nailing equalisers. After the crossbar denied Villa’s luck twice, United scored their third goal at 93′ and ended the game with a 3-2 win.

Ward laid out the 4-1-4-1 formation for the starting lineup, which she uses regularly with Birmingham City and Aston Villa. Golden Boot winner of the season, Rachel Daly, held the spearhead position while Lucy Staniforth played the central pivot between the back four and the midfield four.

Ward’s 4-1-4-1 lineup had been a bit predictable on the central axis — Daly was always the spearhead, and Staniforth was always the central pivot. Daly typically stayed high up, prepared for the killing moments, while Staniforth contributed a wide coverage in both offence and defence. In this game, when Staniforth swung to the sidelines, midfielder Littlejohn dropped back to fill the central pivot position.

Skinner laid out a 4-2-3-1 for Manchester United, using Alessia Russo as the spearhead. Ella Toone, who stays on the top of United’s leaderboard as to “chance created” and “build-up to shot”, was playing her familiar position — nine and a half behind Russo. United’s top scorer, Leah Galton, played on the left wing, and Nikita Parris on the right wing. In the back, the young star Maya Le Tissier and Aoife Mannion held centre-back positions.

United’s wing and back combo on the right side consisted of two very speedy players, Parris and Batlle. They are capable of initiating a swift advance along the sideline immediately after winning over possession. This capability gave them an equaliser shortly after Villa scored the first goal.

With players’ outstanding techniques, the swift advance on United’s left side was also substantial. During another sequence, when Villa lost the possession after crowding seven players in the offence third, Blundell, Russo, and Galton executed a perfect sequence on the left sideline, which advanced into Villa’s defence third in seven seconds.

At the back for United, 20-year-old Le Tissier served as a back pivot, a young backline leader. She has high quality on both the offensive and defensive sides. Her confidence in footwork and decision-making allowed the whole team to push up high and frequently initiated the attacking sequence near the halfway line. Her sending long passes towards the offence third and finding Parris there had worked efficiently in this game.

Eventually, the two teams went into 90 minutes with a 2-2 tie. United’s centre-back Millie Turner, who was subbed in at 87 minutes, headed the ball into the net during a corner kick in the 93rd minute and killed the game.

The Strengths and Weaknesses

Under Ward’s leadership, it was common to see Villa’s full-backs, Pacheco and Mayling, run higher than their respective winger partners. It was also a typical scene in which the wingers Nobbs and Blindkilde Brown, instead of the full-backs, came back to defend, facing a counterattack. This flexibility can be efficient in pulling the opponent out of shape. The pics below are from Villa’s game against Liverpool as an example to demonstrate this.

Figure 1-1: At the start of the sequence, Villa’s right-back Mayling had the ball. Liverpool was maintaining a solid defence shape.
Figure 1-2: Mayling carried the ball forward aggressively and later formed offence strength in the dangerous zone with Lehmann, Dali, and Nobbs. Therefore, Liverpool had to move and close up tightly in that area.
Figure 1-3: The vital moment happened when six Liverpool players crowded on this side, three of whom were in a loose equilateral triangle shape. A local defence shape like this creates three open tunnels where a skilled player can easily pick one to pass or dribble out upon the advantage of choices. After this moment, Staniforth turned and sent the ball to Daly in the box. Hanson caught up on the left side and delivered the first goal of this game.

However, this flexibility also comes with weaknesses. Full-backs not coming back right away created dangerous moments in Villa’s previous games, especially when facing counterattacks. The pics below were an example from one of Liverpool’s counterattacks.

Figure 2: During the counterattack, Villa’s right-back Mayling covered the left side momentarily while the left-back Pacheco was on her way back. The defence responsibility was uncertain for a moment after that. Then we see that Liverpool’s Hinds was comfortably attempting a long shot near the penalty arc, with too much space around her. Meanwhile, Dowie was deep into the box with no Villa player nearby.

Besides the players’ strengths mentioned in the previous chapter, Manchester United has an advantage in the bench depth, and Skinner has shown his capability to exploit it near the end of games. Last season, he subbed in 3.8 players per game during the second halves, and those players scored 10 goals in total during the season, 18.5% of the 54 goals the whole team scored. It’s remarkable how often those players scored just a few minutes after they were subbed in.

Skinner just openly stated that the final 20 minutes of this weekend’s WSL matches could resemble ‘walking football’ with players fatigued after a demanding international schedule. Let’s see if he will cope with what it is or exploit it to the advantage of his squad.

What is New this Weekend

Ona Batlle and Alessia Russo, two “Player of the Year” winners of Manchester United, have decided to start their new journeys. Ona Batlle joined Barcelona back home, and Alessia Russo signed with Arsenal.

Newly signed right-back Jayde Riviere could be prepared as a replacement for Batlle. The Canada international has a very similar heatmap and stats to Batlle’s, with only much less WSL-level experience. Her decent stats on the attacking side imply that she has the potential to be part of the swift offence sequences on the sideline, which is one of Skinner’s favoured tactics. Whoever will be put on that spot, it’ll take some time for her to build her partnership with Parris as smoothly as Batlle had.

When we heard about Manchester United’s recruiting of Geyse, it’s natural to assume it was an attempt to find an alternative for Russo. However, if we look at the heatmap of those players, including Villa’s spearhead Daly, we can see that Geyse tends to move and attack from the sides instead of upfront, like Russo and Daly.

With the current talent pool, will Skinner consider deviating the formation from his favourite 4-2-3-1? Suppose he’s willing to use double spearheads, using the newcomer Miyazawa and Parris’ speed. In that case, the Red Devils can create a wide attacking front which hits right on Villa’s weakness — leaving one attacker unmarked on the far end.

Figure 3: Heatmap of Daly, Russo, and Geyse

If Skinner would like to stick to 4-2-3-1, a suitable replacement for Russo could be Rachel Williams, who shared a similar heatmap with Russo and contributed four goals last season. Previously, She has been subbed in for Russo after the latter was injured. Because Russo contributed 10 goals over 1,548 minutes of playing time last season, while Williams contributed four goals over 268 minutes, it is hard to deny that this efficient scorer deserves some time on the stage.

The Villa side had some good news with recruitment. Goalkeeper Van Domselaar, the Dutch international, has joined the club. Kristy Hanson, who has been loaned to Aston Villa by Manchester United for the last season, signed to be part of Villa officially. During the loan period, Hanson contributed goals for Villa with her powerful and straightforward play style. She scored seven goals for the Villa in the past season of WSL, taking second place on the Villa’s scoreboard (first place was Daly on 22 — the squad scored 47 in total).

Ebony Salmon is another asset Villa has acquired lately. She used to play for Aston Villa from 2017/18 and now returns to Villa from the NWSL. She has been playing centre-forward with a tendency to attack from the right side. Ward could use her as an alternative to Dali, the No.10 behind Daly. Extending the bench depth at this position might be helpful to prevent getting scored on near the end of the game, which happened in games against United twice last season.

Summary

Aston Villa have never beaten Manchester United in the WSL before, but the last duel between the two was definitely an evenly matched fight. Nevertheless, they beat United on penalties in an FA Women’s League Cup match last year. Will this match make history? We shall soon find out.