Historically, recently relegated teams have struggled to win promotion back to the Premier League on the first attempt and as we are told so often, the Championship is one of the toughest and most competitive divisions in the world. Aston Villa have made a fairly unspectacular start to their first season in England’s second tier for almost 30 years.
A narrow opening day defeat to promotion rivals Sheffield Wednesday has been followed by a win, two draws, a 3-1 defeat to Bristol City and most recently a 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest.
New manager Roberto Di Matteo has fully utilised Dr. Tony Xia’s financial backing and dipped a whole leg into the transfer market, bringing in attacking talents Ross McCormack and Jonathan Kodjia for a combined fee of over £20million. However, Di Matteo knows exactly what it takes to bounce back to the Premier League, having achieved the feat with Villa’s intercity rivals West Brom back in 2010, so it’s not surprising to see defensive acquisitions proving the bulk of his transfer outlay. When experts discuss the Championship, they put way too much onus on scoring goals and forget that keeping clean sheets can be the real difference between going up and staying put.
If you use this statistics infographic to compare the Championship to some of Europe’s top divisions, you can see how England’s second tier stacks up in terms of goals-scored. Last season, both teams scored in 51% of Championship matches. An impressive percentage, higher than both La Liga and Ligue 1, but just behind the Premier League and the Bundesliga.
On the other hand, if you look at the amount of goals scored in each game, the Championship is noticeably behind. In 71% of the games last season, over 1.5 goals were scored, followed by 46% for over 2.5 goals and finally 20% for over 3.5 goals, meaning the Championship has a lower amount of goals per game than any of the six big divisions across Europe.
Brentford were the joint-top goal scorers in 15/16, but could only manage a ninth place finish. Middlesbrough, who finished second, wouldn’t have even made the play-offs if the title was decided on goals scored, but they managed to keep a clean sheet in 48% of their matches and only concede seven goals at home the entire season.
So it’s evident that scoring goals isn’t the most important factor in a successful Championship campaign. If Villa want to go back up at the first attempt, a strong defence will be crucial. Di Matteo has made some excellent additions to his defensive ranks, with Tommy Elphick, James Chester and Richie De Laet all coming into the squad, having experienced promotion to the Premier League in recent seasons, whilst Mile Jedinak will provide fantastic protection to that back four, forming a solid foundation for Villa to build an exciting team around.
Pierluigi Gollini has taken over from Brad Guzan as Villa’s number one. The former Manchester United youngster has made a few costly mistakes in the early stages of the season, but Di Matteo has faith he can live up to the promise he showed whilst playing for Verona over the past two seasons.
This new defensive unit has more than enough quality and experience to cope with the rigours of Championship football. If they can stay solid at the back, then I don’t see any reason why Aston Villa can’t get back to where they belong and return to the Premier League next year.
