What happened to Ralf's video analysts? I think he bought in a couple.
I don't want to focus on Villa too much because shit conditions, shit pitch etc. but there were several times against Atleti, Vallecano and Pool where the switch to the opposite flank was too easy. I think it's mostly because the players are just getting used to the system rather than insufficient work rate from our forwards. Ronaldo is the only one I'd single out here - he makes Martial look like peak Tevez, so that's something.
Anyway, we did let a concerning number of runs at our defence. (5-6 each game?). I think it'll take some time for us to press well and until then we'll leak maybe a goal every other game because of the failed press.
I'd keep an eye on metrics like High Pressures, PPDA here:
https://dataviz.theanalyst.com/season-reviews/2021/
Data from the new season will be available once GW1 finishes. I'd encourage you to take a look at the data from last season to note how abysmal
we were (look for "TEAM SEQUENCE PRESSURES" but the rest are informative as well).
We
should hopefully now be in the same league as City, Pool, Chelsea and Brighton (lol).