Aston Villa Look Forward To Their Travels

One football cliché peddled at this time of year is how teams in the relegation zone need to ‘win their home games’. For Aston Villa the opposite might be true.

Aston Villa’s inexperienced team seem burdened by expectations at Villa Park but away from home they are a different proposition. They have picked up 11 points on their travels, only two fewer than their home tally. Recent performances away from Villa Park have been encouraging.

Last 12 Premier League games (6 home / 6 away)

Total shots on target (home): 17
Total shot on target (away):  24

In their last six away games, Aston Villa had seven more shots on target than their equivalent home matches; a 41% increase. A combination of Paul Lambert’s tactics and less pressure to perform has seen the Villains thrive, relatively speaking, on their travels.

At 21/20 (Ladbrokes), they must fancy their chances of beating Reading at the Madejski Stadium on Saturday.

Latest Alternative Form Table

Using the criteria set out in our ‘Shots On Target’ feature, each week we will analyse the recent set of Premier League fixtures to see if the scorelines were a fair reflection of the games. Using ‘shots on target’ rather than goals as out key metric, we hope to discover matches that didn’t produce a ‘fair’ scoreline given the balance of play.

Currently the table shows Wigan are playing better than their results suggest, whereas QPR are gaining more points than the balance of play dictates.