Steven Gerrard has been named as Aston Villa’s next manager. Gerrard’s current club, Ranger will be due a compensation from Villa as he was under contract with the Scottish club. At Rangers, Gerrard has mostly used the 4-3-3 formation along with the 4-2-3-1 formation at times. He prefers to dominate possession by playing out from the back and his teams going forward try to create overload in different areas of the pitch. He would definitely have to tweak his tactics at Villa as in most games Villa will not be dominating possession unlike Rangers.

The 4-3-3 formation would allow the flexibility for Villa to defend deep and play on the counter as well dominate possession if required in certain games. Also looking at the composition of Villa’s squad, the 4-3-3 will enable their best players to be on the pitch.

Aston Villa’s 4-3-3 formation under Steven Gerrard

A big tactical problem which Dean Smith had was fitting in Ollie Watkins and Danny Ings together in the team. Gerrard can solve this by playing Watkins on the left and allowing him the freedom to drift in to central areas. In the 4-3-3, the attacking wingers have less of a defensive responsibility as one of the midfield 3 can cover for them.

Gerrard has done extremely well at Rangers leading them to their first league title in 10 years with possession based attacking tactics. The same tactics would not work at Villa who are currently in danger of a relegation battle so it will interesting to see how Gerrard changes his tactics in the Premier League.