Milly - Love Thy Premier Partners

James Milner believes Villa are slowly turning into a very dangerous outfit because of complimentary partnerships between players on the pitch.

The whole squad is on a high at the moment following the derby win against Blues last weekend, especially given the debuts of our new defensive threesome and Milner believes with ever increasing partnerships and understandings developing between players on the pitch we are slowly growing into a far more dangerous side to face.

'These partnerships can take time - and we have developed some good partnerships all over the field,' Milner told the official site.

'I've been here over a year now and obviously playing with Youngy and other players, you get that understanding.'

He continues to explain that the more on pitch time you have with fellow players, the more you are able to learn how they think, what kind of runs they are liable to make and learning both their strengths and weaknesses in given situations allows you to make the best choice possible for averting danger or creating a promising attack.

'It usually takes time when new players come in but all credit to the three new lads who came in at the back on Sunday, it's tough, especially in a derby like that. But they looked pretty solid.'

Understanding and being able to anticipate your colleagues is helped no end by communication, and we already know that Warnock, Dunne and Collins came in and started barking the orders around.

With that kind of control and organisation in defence over time it will allow folks like Ash and Milly to not track so deep or feel they need to permanently bolster the defence when the opposition are attacking. Which in turn gives us more options on the counter attack which suits us to the ground.

It won't happen overnight, it's possible that sort of 'click' won't occur until the end of the season in terms of them being able to reliably judge when they don't have to chase back without it backfiring on us, but it will come over time.

It'll be a nice sight to see when it does click though!

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