It had been a pretty decent week I imagine for Aston Villa fans once we moved past the continuing shambles we saw on Monday evening against Nottingham Forest, but we all knew that Sunday would be a return to the normal disappointment levels as we welcomed Chelsea to Villa Park.
As seems normal now under head coach Steven Gerrard, Villa dramatically raised their levels for this clash and with Chelsea starting slowly and sitting back, we had a number of good chances in the opening 45 minutes and we basically dominated, but again we simply failed to capitalise on them.
So, with the positives of the half dealt with, we were still 1-0 down as Mason Mount scored six minutes in after a Tyrone Mings gift.
It inevitably changed at half time (it always does) as we were never going to keep that level of intensity going as we’ve seen so often before in better performances. 65 minutes in Chelsea had a freekick, Emi Martinez was left wrong footed at it was 2-0 and Mount had his brace.
Gerrard said ahead of the game that Chelsea ‘…should be coming to Villa Park and wiping the floor with us’ but we’ve seen so many teams do just that in the last 12 months and he still doesn’t know his best XI and we still have no discernible or defined style of play that suits the groups strengths.
The boos and frustrations of the crowd are becoming far more noticeable now. I guess it’ll be Potter’s fault we lost because he didn’t leave Raheem Sterling at right back.
Ho hum, the experiment should come to an end soon.
Villa Park
Premier League
16/10/2022 3:00 pm
Referee: Robert Jones
| Aston Villa | Chelsea | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mount (6, 65) | |||||||
| Martinez | Arrizabalaga | ||||||
| Cash | Sterling | 89 | |||||
| Konsa | Chalobah | ||||||
| Mings | Thiago Silva | ||||||
| Young | Cucurella | 45 | |||||
| J Ramsey | 78 | Chilwell | |||||
| Douglas Luiz | Loftus-Cheek | ||||||
| McGinn | 74 | Kovacic | 65 | ||||
| Bailey | 66 | Mount | |||||
| Ings | Havertz | 45 | |||||
| Watkins | Aubameyang | 58 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Sanson | Jorginho | 65 | |||||
| Buendia | 66 | Pulisic | |||||
| Chambers | Mendy | ||||||
| Nakamba | Broja | 89 | |||||
| Bednarek | Zakaria | ||||||
| Coutinho | 74 | Gallagher | 58 | ||||
| Olsen | Koulibaly | 45 | |||||
| Dendoncker | 78 | Azpilicueta | 45 | ||||
| Bogarde | Chukwuemeka | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 18 | Goal attempts | 8 |
| 7 | On Target | 4 |
| 7 | Corners | 1 |
| 12 | Fouls | 11 |
| 0 | Yellow Cards | 3 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 41 | % | 59 |